Rescue Me
by StoryGardener
Summary: Kirk survives a deadly virus, but to Spock something seems changed about him. It threatens their friendship and Spock's ability to serve on the Enterprise. Will Spock find the truth before it destroys his Captain? Not slash. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I don't own anything. Please don't sue.**

**Chapter One**

_Screaming. His own, and someone else's. Only his screaming is on the outside, pushing out from his throat, a raw negative disintegrating as his voice breaks and tears, a shield of noise buckling against the other voice, the one inside_ _his mind. Then his screaming stops and something snaps-_

"Ow!"

He woke to an echo of pain. His head was lolling, bumping against a smeared window. He groaned against the ache in his neck as he lifted his head. Slowly his surroundings came into focus.

The van, of course, bouncing along the desert road at breakneck speed. They really should fix the hydraulics – or in any case they were going to have to, after this ride.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

Lia appeared in his view – still distorted along the edges, funny for sleep deprivation – as always, quick and assertive. She slipped her long, lithe body in between him and the seat in front, straddling his lap. The scent of her green skin – flushing darker, hotter – drove him crazy and he had to take a deep breath.

_Xylian women… like witches. _

McCoy had warned him.

"What's the time?" he whispered, smiling. He should be concerned, but wasn't.

"I shan't tell you," she teased. She locked her mouth to his, _hard_, like coming in for a kill, assaulting his lips, cutting off his breath. Her burning body was transmitting her sexual fever to his, and he almost failed to pull away.

"I gotta-" he gasped, half laughing, half begging, sliding out from under her, stumbling into the aisle, "get rea-"

His smile turned into a grimace as his body threatened to go into a cramp.

She was up like a shot, her skin instantly changed to a pale green.

"I'll give you something."

"No, please," he moaned, but his hand was deftly pushed away and the hypo stung his neck. The relief was instant, and he was glad for it. He collapsed into the next seat.

Lia knelt in the aisle beside him, sweet and maternal - her light green skin threading with delicate, alabaster veins – and held his hand.

"We've been too hard on you, KirkJim," she said, her voice soft with real pity.

He smiled and shook his head. "No, HazLia, I had a great time, the best time ever. Just… I must've caught a flu or something."

"You lie," she said mischievously, "you were trying to outdo LakFarn at the second rock wall, _that's_ what. You know LakFarn is nothing to me, KirkJim!"

A burst of laughter came from the front of the van, where Farn manned the controls.

Kirk smiled and rested his head back.

"Rest now, KirkJim, we'll get you to your shuttle on time. Rest…"

Lia stroked a lock of hair from his forehead and held his hand, infusing a different chemical into his body, cleansing, calming. Drifting, drifting….


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"He's gonna be la-ate," McCoy sang. His lips resisted the smile playing there, but the glint in his blue eyes was unmistakable.

Spock followed the Doctor's gaze to the point on the dusty horizon where the ribbon of the road disappeared over the rim. His dissatisfaction with the Captain for holding them up vanished.

"I take it that you stand to gain if he is," he commented.

"Oh, don't be such a prude, Spock!" McCoy huffed good-naturedly, not taking his eyes off the horizon. "But yes, if you must know. A bottle of Scotty's best whiskey. And the satisfaction, of course, of Jim's embarrassment. You know he's so damned disciplined when it comes to punctuality."

Spock glanced sideways at the Doctor, whose smile was now as broad as it could possibly be. He was actually bouncing on his toes.

"I can with 98.9% certainty say, Doctor, that the Captain will not be late."

"What!" McCoy cried out, snapping his head toward Spock. "How would you-" Then he realized. Vulcan eyesight was much superior to human eyesight. "Oh, _damn_ you!"

"In fact, I can now say it with 99.2% certainty," Spock continued dispassionately. "Unless his van breaks down, but judging by the speed at which it is going, even if it that happens its momentum will carry it here in time."

McCoy could see it now, a tiny plume of dust on the horizon, rapidly growing. He glanced at the clock on the shuttle bay's wall and cursed again.

"I take it you also stood to _lose_ something, Doctor," Spock inquired.

The grumbled response was so replete with invective that he couldn't quite catch what was the object in question, but he got a pretty good idea of the Doctor's feelings about it.

"Alright, me laddies," Mister Scott started yelling at the group assembled on the platform. "Capt'n's on 'is way. Embark, embark! You too, Doctor," the engineer added _sotto voce_.

McCoy turned and glowered at Scott, who ducked into the shuttle.

Spock held back the observation that it was hardly Mister Scott's fault, or even the Captain's. It was much more interesting to let the Doctor simmer and seethe over time than to have him blow steam this instant.

McCoy snatched up his bag and turned toward the shuttle. He wasn't going to greet the Captain upon his arrival, let alone congratulate him on being on time.

The van – quite rickety, in fact – hardly slowed down before it came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the landing dock. The door slid open and Spock caught a glimpse of a female Xylian, her dark green skin glowing with energy.

Kirk appeared, looked up at Spock on the platform, waved and jumped out. Spock frowned. The Captain did not look the picture of health. He was pale, his eyes were ringed darkly, and he landed on the road without his usual spring.

But he was smiling, even when the female forcefully thrust the duffel bag at him from the door opening. Spock held his breath. The Captain was about to lose his balance when the Xylian leaned out and locked her arm around his neck, pulled him towards her and passionately kissed him on the mouth. After a couple of seconds Kirk laughed as he disentangled himself. The sound of his laughter was so joyful, Spock's worry dissipated.

Kirk bounded up the ladder. The van moved off even before its door had closed.

"Captain."

"Spock, I'm not late, am I?" Kirk panted, trying to hide his embarrassment.

"No, Sir. You have forty-three seconds to spare."

"Oh good. Can't give McCoy the satisfaction of being late after I chewed him out last time."

Spock nodded. "Indeed, Captain. Captain, are you well?"

Kirk had grabbed the door jamb to steady himself. McCoy had seen it too and leapt up from his seat.

"No, it's nothing," Kirk said, quickly holding up his hand. He was still smiling. "I just had a – a _vigorous_ leave, that's all."

"Oh, _jeeze_!" McCoy whined, rolling his eyes and heading back to his seat. "That's all I need, Jim! Come and see me in Sickbay when we arrive but don't, please _don't_ tell me about it, alright?"

Kirk chuckled and stopped next to the single seat all the way in the back. He stuffed his duffel in the overhead bin.

"I'll just take a nap on our way over and would appreciate it if no one disturbed me, Mister Spock. I feel like I've not slept in days, and I probably haven't. How long before we reach the Star Base?"

"The flight is four hours and forty-two minutes, Captain."

"Good, that'll give me time to, um, recuperate." He smiled again and lowered himself into the seat, wincing a little.

"You _are_ alright, Captain?" Spock ventured.

Kirk rested his head against the backrest and closed his eyes.

"I'll be fine, Spock, go sit and…meditate or something. I'm fine…"

Spock marveled, looking down at his Captain, already asleep – or, as McCoy would have put it, "passed out". He looked tired, more tired than he had when they had landed on this pleasure planet ninety-three hours ago. His lips on which the smile still played were bruised. His hair was ruffled and dusty. The knuckles of one hand were scraped, but tended to. His clothes were crumpled and dirty.

But, Spock guessed, possibly these were signs of a successful leave for the Captain. He would never cease to be amazed at the variety of activities that humans found relaxing, or the circumstances under which these same activities suddenly turned stressful. He could not figure out what it was on this occasion for his Captain, but the smile told him to set his worries aside.

The shuttle rumbled as the engines fired up. Spock quickly moved toward the front and sat down at an empty station. He was going to use the trip to study the scientific data that even a pleasure planet was unable to withhold from an enterprising Vulcan.

00000000000

Two hours into the flight Spock was so abruptly overcome with dread that he almost panicked. He jerked back from his view screen, clutched his chest, drew a tremulous breath.

"Commander?" the pilot began.

Ignoring him, Spock leapt up and rushed to the back of the shuttle, jostling the passengers on either side of the narrow aisle. When he reached the Doctor's seat, three rows in, he shook McCoy's shoulders and uttered, in a voice raw with anguish,

"_Doctor_!"

"What the-?" McCoy jerked awake and stumbled out of his seat, followed the Vulcan.

All heads were turned to them and a collective gasp went up as the Vulcan hauled the Captain out of his seat and laid him, swiftly but gently, down onto the carpeted floor of the aisle.

McCoy felt that punch to his gut – the one he knew too well, after years of service with Jim Kirk, the one that he thought would kill him, each time, over and over, with anger and helplessness.

Kirk's face was white as a sheet, his jaw clenched on a monstrous pain, so rigid his muscles stood out like ropes on his neck. Blood was spewing from his nose and mouth and had already drenched his shirt. He was trembling all over. His terrified eyes, wide open to an agony, nevertheless registered Spock, who was leaning over him. His hands were shaking so badly he grabbed past Spock's arm at first, but then he clamped onto the Vulcan's wrist, like an anchor just in time before the first convulsion hit.

"Hold him down," McCoy yelled.

Spock threw himself down onto Kirk's jerking body, pinning him to the deck as the Doctor ripped open the shuttle medkit and loaded the hypo.

"Hurry, Doctor," Spock exhorted, his voice shaking to Kirk's convulsions.

_How could a human be so pale and yet burning up with such a hot fever?_

McCoy jabbed the hypo into Kirk's neck and a second later Kirk's pupils rolled back into his head, his head jerked sideways once - a stubborn _NO_. Then, with a slight sigh, he went limp.

Spock raised himself and watched McCoy move the sensor over the lifeless body.

"What is wrong with him?" he demanded.

"How do I know , Spock!" McCoy retorted. "Febrile convulsion, but what is causing it-let Chapel through!"

Only now did Spock register the Nurse. He quickly stood and moved in between the seats to let her pass.

"_Damn it, _he's going into cardiac arrest!" McCoy yelled, loading another spray. "Spock, we need the Enterprise, _now_!"

The crowd cleared the aisle as he sped toward the controls up front. His panic fluttered like a wild beast in his chest. The _Enterprise _was docked at the Star Base undergoing small repairs. Would she be ready? There was no other vessel as fast at the Base.

He stabbed the panel.

"Star Base, this is Commander Spock on board the _Ranger _on its way from Xyla. We have a medical emergency involving the Captain. Request the _Enterprise _to rendez-vous with us at warp speed."

"On our way, Mister Spock. Warp six," came Sulu's almost instant reply. "ETA…"

_Forty-two minutes_. _Too late._

"Make that warp eight, Mister Sulu," Spock ordered.

The hesitation was almost imperceptible.

"Yes, Sir, warp eight!"

Taking a shallow breath, Spock allowed himself to look back down the aisle. McCoy and Chapel were bent over the lifeless body of his Captain and friend, working frantically. He knew he could not stand, so he remained sitting.

"She can handle it, Mister Spock." It was Scott, appearing next to him. "But are ye alright, Mister Spock?"

Frowning, Spock looked up at Scott and then down to where the engineer was staring. It was his hand, protectively holding his wrist where Jim had held him. Only then did he register the pain. The ulna there – Vulcan bone that was like steel – was broken.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

/ Captain's log, Stardate 2046.1. First Commander Spock in temporary command. The Captain is gravely ill with a viral disease contracted during shore leave on Xyla. The Xylian Council of Health identified the infecting agent and sent the counter formula. We do not yet know if it is working, if it was administered on time. It seems like a straightforward case, but… We will shed more light on the matter if-when the Captain regains consciousness. /

McCoy joined Spock at the observation window. They stood for a while in silence, Spock taut and still, hands behind his back, one hand cradling his broken wrist. The Doctor had treated it, but Spock needed to meditate to complete the healing. For now, he was blocking the pain. McCoy stood beside him, slightly stooped, fatigue dragging him down. He was fiddling with a pen.

In the small room beyond the window Jim Kirk lay deathly still. Spock spared himself no detail. The gentle rise of the Captain's chest that was not his, but the respirator's. The pulse throbbing in his temple that was not his, but the blood transfuser's. The bone white face, the eyelids papery thin and still as death.

Spock could not suppress the thought – illogical, an insult to his mind, but _of_ his mind.

_This is not happening._

Three hours ago, four hours after the Captain collapsed, they had received news from the Xylian Council of Health that the three adventurers had been located in the dessert. They had not made it back to a populated area before the virus struck them down and caused them to crash the van. The two males had died, horribly though quite quickly, inside the vehicle. The female had exited, in her delirium possibly looking for help, and perished in the wasteland.

Spock remembered Jim's smile, his obvious fondness for this female. But he could not imagine telling Jim the news of her death. For Jim too was dead.

"He's not dead," McCoy asserted again, nervously tapping the pen to his lips. "There is brain activity. Yeah, it's a mess, but the antiviral compound is working! "

"Saying it is so does not make it so," said Spock coolly.

McCoy dropped his hand with a gesture of annoyance. "How can you be so stubborn? You who always _know_ that Jim's alive, even though he's light years away!"

"That link is… gone, Doctor," Spock stated, his voice cold and sharp with the emotion and meaning of the words.

"Well, you're wrong," McCoy grumbled, "here he lies before you, _alive, _and he's fighting it with all that dogged will of his." He turned away and sat down at his desk, consulting for the umpteenth time the readings on the monitor. "A good thing humans don't transmit this bug, I'd have everyone from that shuttle ride in here, including myself…"

Spock pressed his lips together and shut out McCoy's nervous chatter. He had been in turmoil since the Captain had collapsed. He needed to meditate, but how does one meditate with half one's mind missing? He blinked. A minute ago he had sounded like a child. 'Saying it is so does not make it so,' what did that mean? Yes, there was brain activity, but no matter how hard he tried, Spock couldn't get a sense of the mind arising from it.

To Spock this meant that that mind was not Jim Kirk's.

Could a virus do _that_?

000000000000

But the man slightly propped up on the bed was Jim Kirk. He was conscious, wearily so, but remarkably alert after having woken up from a ten-day coma.

A thin sliver of fear started threading Spock's spine.

"Captain."

"Spock?"

_This is Jim!_

"I am happy to see that you are recovering, Sir."

Spock felt Kirk's gaze bore into him. A quizzical, not altogether carefree smile played on the drawn face.

"What is it, Spock? Come on, out with it."

He was trying to be cavalier and not succeeding. His face was quickly draining of color.

"You must continue to rest, Captain."

"Yes," Kirk sighed and closed his eyes.

Relieved, Spock turned to go.

"Bones tells me," Kirk said softly – Spock turned, the Captain's eyes remained closed – "that you gave up on me."

Spock cleared his throat to speak but Kirk smiled. The smile was frail and the eyelids were still closed upon the glimmer that Spock knew were in the eyes.

_That is him, smiling._

With a feeble gesture of his hand, Kirk waved Spock away.


	4. Chapter 4

- Little rewrite here. Just watched *Journal to Babel* again and there it is said Spock and Sarek had not talked for eighteen years. So now it's Amanda who helps Spock. -

**Chapter 4**

"It is illogical."

"It can't be, Spock," said Amanda. Her heart was heavy for her son. Spock's face on the screen was paler than normal and lined with worry. Only as he boy had he ever shown his distress to her so expressively. To see him like this was alarming. "The link _can_ be broken, no?" she added helplessly.

"Only by death, Mother. But Jim is alive. And he _is_ Jim. That is illogical."

Amanda hesitated. "_Something_ died, Spock," she tried. "Oh, let it go, son. Don't let it tear you apart. Have you meditated?"

"I have not," Spock admitted. "I cannot."

Amanda was deeply saddened to see that her son was lost to his Vulcan side. But how could he meditate when the healing logic itself was torn and wounded? Amanda was not a Vulcan, but she had lived with and among Vulcans for almost a lifetime. And what Spock described in such simple terms perplexed her too. It _was_, simply, illogical.

But then her human side objected: nothing is simple. She cast about for some explanation, but found none that would satisfy Spock.

To see Spock suffer so, so _humanly_, was heart wrenching. Amanda had not experienced this bond that had existed between Spock and James Kirk – indeed, as a human she was incapable of experiencing such a bond - and so neither had she experienced its sundering. But she knew how Vulcans mourned, and she had some idea of how humans mourned, and Spock seemed to be going through both.

Oh, she wished Spock would talk with his father, but they hadn't spoken in over eighteen years.

"Will you be near a Starbase soon? We can arrange for a healer to meet you."

"_No_, Mother," said Spock brusquely. Then he recovered. "I apologize. A healer cannot heal _logic_. I must… I must _feel_ this out."

Mother and son regarded each other over the many light years that parted them.

At long last Amanda nodded and smiled, her eyes brimming with both sadness and courage.

"Live long and prosper, Spock."

"Live long and prosper, Mother."

00000000000

"Jim. How are you feeling?"

"Will you stop asking me that, Bones," Kirk snapped. He sighed and almost hung his head. "Sorry," he mumbled. He set his platter on a table and sat down heavily. McCoy joined him and unfurled his napkin.

"Spock's getting you down?" he said plainly.

What else could it be? They had been on light mapping duty since Xyla, a month and a half ago, to let the Captain recuperate. And physically Jim was as good as his own self again. But Spock was keeping up his stubborn rejection of the Captain.

In his duties the Vulcan was as professional and helpful as ever, and others would not notice the difference if it were not for the often moody reactions of the Captain, who felt the difference acutely. Off duty, Spock had isolated himself, claiming personal difficulties. His reaction to Jim whenever they crossed paths off duty was cold, compared to what even Bones had come to accept as a warm, sometimes burning friendship. It weighed heavily on Jim, whose demands of Spock that he explain himself had met with cool withdrawal.

Kirk seemed ready to explode again, but then realized McCoy had not spoken in jest.

"What is it with him, Bones? Ever since Xyla he has acted like-like he just arrived on the _Enterprise_. Like we never knew each other. Worse, like I don't exist!"

McCoy sighed. "There was that time, when you were fighting for your life, that he maintained that you were dead. Even when it was clear you'd pull through, he insisted that it was somehow not you."

Kirk was regarding him with riveted attention, like he might find in McCoy's face and words the answer. McCoy felt for him. As if his recovery hadn't been hard enough…

"I remember," Kirk said, his anger flaring. "You don't know how that felt, to come out of that and have your best friend tell you, to your face, that you're not really _you_!"

"Jim," McCoy warned, putting his hand on the Captain's to contain him. The ensigns at the next table had stopped talking. "Calm down."

Kirk dropped his fork into the untouched food on his plate and pushed the platter away from him.

"Spock's not been meditating," McCoy said. "He is in some kind of trouble but will not talk to me about it. He's acting illogically, _emotionally. _Maybe it's not you, but him? Maybe he needs your help?"

Kirk nearly gaped.

"How can I help him, Bones? He won't let me near him."

"I don't know, Jim. I'm just saying that Spock is lonely too. In a way you're both grieving for what you had. So, it's lost. Let's assume it's lost. Why not start anew?"

McCoy hardly believed he had said that. His own anger toward the Vulcan for abandoning Jim at such a time knew no bounds, and now here he was, pleading with Jim to put himself in harm's way with that pig-headed hobgoblin!

But Kirk was slowly nodding, his eyes already set on the challenge and his smile – the Doctor realized with concern – full of hope.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

/ Captain's log, Stardate 3626.9. We are wrapping up the mapping of the Tabula Rasa Nebula and will set course for the Donor System to investigate a possible deposit of Dilithium. That precious ore is also at the center of our next assignment, which we just took receipt of. On 3842.3 the _Enterprise_ is to transport Federation ambassadors to the Babel Conference to discuss the admission to the Federation of the Coridan system, at present the prime source of Dilithium. /

_Screaming. Why was he screaming? _

_Pain! He was burning! Flames were licking his feet, his hands and his skin started to boil, as the fire crept inexorably inward and engulfed him, infiltrating, breaking into him, breaking him open._

"_Don't do this!"_

_What? Who? _

_The dark eyes opened onto his agony and cracked him open like a brittle shell and took-_

Kirk woke up with a start. He greedily took in what he could see of his quarters in the dim light.

_I'm on the Enterprise. Nothing has happened. _

His head throbbed with an old hurt, too old to define. He'd had a nightmare, but that was all he knew. Try as he might – fearfully, but bravely – he couldn't remember the dream except what his body remembered of it: the surge of adrenaline, fast receding, the pounding heart, the stiff jaw like he had touched a live wire.

And a raw throat. Had he cried out in his sleep? A scream would have been heard in the corridor and the adjacent quarters, and no one had come running.

He looked at the clock and moaned. Impossible. He had gone to bed only 30 minutes ago. Was it even possible to dream so soon after falling asleep? In any case, the thought of going back to sleep was unbearable. The long night stretched out before him.

He did some paperwork, but soon abandoned it for fear it would put him to sleep. He considered going to the bridge, but reconsidered it, knowing Spock was there and that he would report to the Doctor. He read a book, then had to pace his confined quarters to knock the sleepiness out of him. That made him dizzy and he had to sit down at his desk. His body was craving rest. It wasn't long until his shift started, a couple of hours. He put his head down on his arm on the desk and within seconds sleep overtook him.

He woke up not long after, a scream stuck in his throat. He was on the floor, thrashing against a cramp. His tortured muscles felt like they were about to snap under the strain, his brain like it was on fire. His body was screaming for oxygen, for him to take a breath. He sucked in air through clenched jaws and that made it instantly better. He took one more breath, then another, carefully.

_Relax, relax_, he prayed against the panic.

When he was finally sure the cramp was gone, he gingerly sat up. Holding on to the desk, he stood up, trembling from weakness. He was drenched in sweat. He stumbled into the bathroom and vomited up what little he had in his stomach. Then he stepped into the shower, leaned against the stall and let the cold water run over him.

He was getting dressed, relieved that it was over, when out of the blue his throat constricted into a sob and he staggered under a wave of grief so crushing he had to sit down on the floor right where he was standing.

_What is happening? _

Consciously he had no apprehension or recollection of sadness, or of a cause of it, but it was in his body, somehow, this hurt and this need for comfort. He clamped down on a cry for help to Bones. Angrily, he pulled himself together. It was only a memory of whatever had happened to him in the dream, nothing more. He shoved it away ruthlessly.

When he looked up at the clock he saw that he had one hour left before his shift. He calculated he had couldn't have slept forty-five minutes that second time around. But he felt better, and ravenous. He had time to get a big breakfast into him, and coffee, lots of it.

000000000000

Three days later McCoy got the call.

"Doctor, please see me in my quarters."

The Doctor exchanged a loaded glance with Nurse Chapel before grabbing his medkit and hurrying out. He had heard from Spock and other Bridge crew that the Captain was increasingly irritable and having trouble concentrating. Spock had even deemed it necessary to warn him, Kirk, that soon he would not be fit for command.

The subject in question had nevertheless found the strength to mulishly avoid the Doctor.

And McCoy had not gone out of his way to hound the Captain. Spock had volunteered that the conclusion of the Nebula mapping was uneventful and that the Captain's presence on the Bridge was mere routine. McCoy had done a full physical on the Captain only five days ago and Kirk was in perfect shape.

Now, feeling both a little annoyed that Kirk had been giving him the slip and a little smug about being called in anyway, he walked in without using the chime. By the looks of him Kirk didn't mind.

"You look like hell!"

McCoy whipped out his medical sensor and swept it over Kirk, slumped in his desk chair.

"Thanks, Bones, you're no beauty either," Kirk joked miserably.

"My God, man, your metabolic rate is off the charts! It looks like you've run a marathon!"

"I've-I've had cramps. Whole body cramps."

McCoy looked at him sharply.

"Like seizures?"

The Doctor could see that the Captain didn't want to hear that word. He knew that Kirk had a vague memory of the seizure on the _Copernicus_ on their way back from Xyla. What kind of agony called for the kind of superhuman strength that could break Vulcan bone? He also knew Kirk was still feeling distress – if not, inexplicably, guilt – over the Xylian female's fate.

"I guess so," Kirk mumbled. "They start in my sleep. I've not been able to sleep."

He rubbed his sunken, bloodshot eyes, which made him look oddly like a child. McCoy cursed himself for not pursuing the Captain with more vigor. He kept the sensor whirring, trying to interpret the data.

"No wonder, Jim, your brain chemistry is out of whack. It could be from lack of sleep. I'll give you a mild sedative. You need a good rest."

He pulled the hypo from his medkit but stopped when Kirk cringed, a look of pure fear on his face.

"_No Bones_! I-I don't want to sleep," Kirk said softly, his eyes glued to the dreaded hypo.

McCoy was speechless. It was heart breaking to see Kirk so fearful.

"I have nightmares," Kirk explained reluctantly. "It's the nightmares that set off these seizures."

"I don't know, Jim. I think you've got it the other way around. But this sedative will almost instantly put you in a sleep state beyond dreaming. You'll have no dreams."

"You're sure about that?"

McCoy could see the glimmer of hope in Kirk's eyes.

_He must be hurting for rest_, he thought.

"Well, yes," the Doctor hesitated, glancing at his readings again, "as sure as I can be with this unusual brain chemistry… But you need sleep, Jim. There is simply no way around it."

"Spock to Captain Kirk," the intercom chimed. "Captain, you are expected in Engineering for the systems analysis."

Kirk reached out to press the communicator button on his desk but McCoy beat him to it.

He slammed the button and snarled, "He can't make it right now, Mister Spock! You'll have to do it without him!"

The fact that Kirk didn't object to this flagrant intrusion raised all the flags in McCoy's ample arsenal, collected primarily for his Captain. And he knew that if he didn't grasp the opportunity Jim would find the modicum of stubbornness left in his tired brain to refuse the sedative.

"Come on, Jim," he said, pulling Kirk up by his arm and leading him to the bed. "Lie down. Let's give it a try. I'll stay here."

He injected the sedative without further ado. Kirk frowned, closed his eyes, and within a few seconds was fast asleep.

The door slid open. Spock, of course.

"He'll be alright," McCoy whispered, cutting off questions. "He hasn't slept for days, complains of nightmares that set off seizures."

Spock lifted an eyebrow. McCoy realized that for Spock, too, that seizure three months ago was a painful memory.

"Is it a relapse of the virus?" Spock asked.

"I doubt that," McCoy drawled. "I did blood work on him only five days ago and it came out clean. I'll run another test as soon as he's awake. He just needs rest."

"Sick Bay to Bridge," came Chapel's voice over the intercom.

McCoy cursed under his breath as he pressed the button.

"What now!" he grumbled, muffling his annoyance.

"We have a medical emergency, Doctor. Ensign Lask had a nasty fall in the cargo bay."

"On my way." He released the button. "Damn intercom. Stay with him."

"Doctor-"

"Don't _Doctor_ me, Spock. He should be fine but I don't trust these readings and I promised someone would stay with him. Get over whatever it is that's been haunting you and stay with him!"

And with that the Doctor stormed out of the room.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Spock looked down at Kirk and relaxed. The Captain was peacefully asleep. The chest moved gently up and down, the vein pulsed strong in his temple, the long eyelashes quivered minutely.

He felt a compassion for the Captain that he had not experienced in a long time. A compassion, he now realized with a sinking, guilty feeling, that he should have been able to summon up during Kirk's difficult convalescence from the virus. If he were not assured of the Captain's unreserved forgiveness, he would have felt the need to call a Nurse to relieve him of this duty while the Doctor was unavailable.

Instead he remained standing next to the bed, assured also of his place there.

Yes, they had found their peace. It had been a close call. There had been moments when Spock, deprived of meditation, had thought that he might go mad. And certainly he had been unable to act. It had been Kirk who had taken the first step towards a resolution and salvation for Spock. The day Spock had announced to his mother that he was going to resign from Starfleet, Kirk had "stormed the castle," as McCoy put it.

He had demanded that Spock let him into his quarters and immediately upon entering had started pouring out all that he felt. Slowly, as that hard unburdening unfolded, Spock had overcome his panic, his anger, his fear, and had opened to the Captain's proposal to start anew.

"I don't know what you think is missing, Spock, and I confess that I don't miss it. But I miss _you_, and _you_ are still here. For you something good, something positive has gone missing, but nothing _negative_ has taken its place, has it? Tell me, do I seem a monster to you?"

"No, Captain," Spock had said. "Merely a… a stranger."

Kirk had stood there, at the center of his room, his old, vital self in full pursuit of a solution, visibly struggling with the fact of Spock's bereavement for him. Spock in turn had realized how strange that must be for Kirk, that someone was mourning him. But Kirk's frank confrontation with that strange situation had not affected his confidence.

"Well," he had stated triumphantly, "then there is no reason why you and I cannot be-_become _friends!"

"But the bond, the special bond is gone," Spock had responded with the desperation of the lost.

Kirk continued undaunted.

"I realize that, Spock," he said. "That special _Vulcan_ bond is gone. But there can still be _human_ friendship."

The Captain's courage had given Spock the strength to admit that what he proposed was possible. This in turn had allowed Spock to finally accept the loss of his special bond. No, he still could not reconcile it with logic, but he could accept it _in_ _some_ way.

So they had started work on their new friendship, and _work_ it was. There was a lot of grievance, even distrust, on both sides. But Kirk, this brave, beautiful stranger, had persevered, just like Spock remembered that _other_ James T. Kirk doing.

Yes, Spock was still convinced that something was changed in the Captain. He did not hide this information from Kirk, who threw up his hands at it and did not let it slow him down. Spock, now able to meditate, followed his example and did not let it interfere with their new relationship.

The Captain's trouble over the last couple of days had affected Spock deeply - how deeply was the gauge for how much their friendship had grown. Spock could not help worrying that even after they had overcome his radical "I don't know you anymore," the Captain was again slipping away from him.

00000000000

Kirk's face contorted and his body tensed. He started tossing and becoming rapidly more agitated. Spock took a step closer, hesitated, but observed Kirk's racing heartbeat in the artery in his neck and his elevated temperature in his flushed face. He seemed to be in pain, and now he moaned. Spock breached the distance and took the Captain's arms.

"Jim!" he said firmly, carefully shaking him.

Kirk's body started trembling under Spock's hands and Spock knew he had to wake him, now. He pulled the Captain up and shook him hard.

"Jim!" he yelled.

Kirk's eyes flew open just as his body stiffened. Then he saw Spock, drew a tremulous breath, and slumped. Spock let him gently lie back down on the bed.

"Spock, I- Bones was here, he- He said I wouldn't dream!"

"Do you remember your dream, Captain?"

Kirk weakly shook his head against the pillow.

"I'm so tired."

Spock turned to the desk and pressed the communicator button.

"Doctor McCoy."

"McCoy here. Spock?"

"Doctor, the Captain had a nightmare. He would have had a seizure had I not awakened him."

"That's impossible," the Doctor grumbled. "Is he okay?"

Spock looked back toward the Captain, who gave a faint gesture that he was.

"He is, for now."

"I'm stuck here. I'll come right over when I'm finished. Not long. Spock, it'll be tough 'cause I shot him full of sedatives, but _don't let him go to sleep_."

"Understood, Doctor."

When Spock turned back to the Captain and saw his eyes closed, he almost burst into a run, but Kirk made that tired hand gesture again to indicate he was still awake.

"I'm so worn out," he groaned, rubbing his closed eyes. "My eyes feel like there's buckets of sand in them."

"Captain," Spock said as calmly as he could, "would it help you if I performed a mind meld?"

"No," said Kirk abruptly, opening his bloodshot eyes wide, but keeping them fixed on the ceiling.

Spock could see that he was not breathing, then realized that he too was holding his breath. He exhaled, accepting the fact that ,for both of them, a mind meld was out of the question.

Kirk closed his eyes again.

"Keep talking, Spock."

"What should I talk about, Captain?"

"Oh, anything."

"Anything… Mister Scott and I were about to perform the systems analysis. The intent is to-"

"-No-oo, Mister Spock," Kirk groaned through a smile. "Don't _put_ me to sleep! Tell me something exciting."

Spock found himself at a loss.

"Maybe it is better, Jim, if _you_ do the talking."

Kirk chuckled softly.

"You've got me there, Spock."

And suddenly Spock knew what he wanted to hear from the Captain.

"Please tell me, if you wish, what happened on your shore leave, on Xyla."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's note.** I finally came across a title while writing this. "Rescue Me" shows up numerous times on the FanFiction site, but not in TOS, so I think it is okay to use it.

I'm writing chapter 16 now. The plot of the story is exploding under my fingers and I want to keep running with it. That is, I don't want to break the rapid flow by going back to earlier chapters, some already published, that I know need more work. I'm wondering what to do: keep publishing and rewrite later, or keep it all under wraps until the whole thing's done. I feel the urge to publish because the immediate audience is what keeps me motivated. Also, I have the feeling this will be my longest fanfic so far. What to do?

**Chapter 7**

Kirk raised his head off the pillow a little to look at Spock with surprise. Spock was certain, for a moment, that he would refuse. He was so quiet – though obviously the suggestion had shaken him thoroughly awake. Spock counted the seconds.

"We debriefed, Spock," Kirk said finally, frowning in confusion.

"I am aware of that, Captain, and _brief_ is the operative word."

Kirk, defused, grinned and relaxed. But now was Spock's turn to frown – though he did so inwardly. He realized how brief indeed, and vague, had been the Captain's report. Part of that had been the anterograde amnesia that had affected his memory of the crisis and of the days prior to it. That amnesia should have cleared fairly soon but, caught up in his personal turmoil, Spock had not followed up.

"Okay," Kirk began, suddenly appreciative of the suggestion. "Though the ending was lousy and the beginning unexceptional, the middle was quite a success." He settled back and closed his tired eyes. "Where do you want me to begin?"

"How did you come by your Xylian guides?"

"We were at the bar after the reception. Ambassador Zent mentioned the desert climbing walls and McCoy flapped out that that was right up my alley. Zent told me he knew of the perfect guides for me, a team that often took him and his friends there. I had nothing planned but three days in the capital being wined and dined by him and his bureaucrats. I jumped on it!"

"You met them the next day?"

"Yes, I was ready to tear out of there before the first sun was up. It was still dark when they drove up to the gatehouse, in that van of theirs. I was waiting for them and if it hadn't been for Zent's recommendation I'd have politely declined, seeing that wreck. Then _she_ came out" – a shadow passed over the Captain's face, but it was quickly chased away by his reminiscent smile – "and, well… McCoy and Scotty were there, just coming in from their own nightly adventure. McCoy took one look at her and took me aside to warn me about the Xylian witches. 'Too late,' I joked. And off we went."

"Where did you go?"

Kirk squinted in an effort to concentrate.

"We went straight to the first rock wall. It took us several hours to get there. I helped Lia and Farn arrange the equipment. We exchanged climbing stories."

"Which ones, Jim?"

Kirk opened his eyes and turned to look at Spock.

"Huh? Which stories? I-I don't remember. It's hazy. McCoy said I'd lose some of those memories from right before the crisis."

Kirk was looking mildly alarmed. It added to Spock's concern for him.

"Do you wish to continue, Captain?"

"Yeah," Kirk said, but there was hesitation. Then, recklessly, he added, "Ask me some more!" He settled back on his bunk.

"You got to the first wall. What happened?"

Kirk smiled broadly.

"We climbed it. Lia, Farn and I. It was a beauty. Sheer, shiny. The handholds were miniscule, fingertip deep. Xylians, you must know, are taller than humans, lo-ong limbs. I had to be inventive to keep up with them. I suffered but they were professionals and I felt pretty safe throughout."

"May I ask what you mean by 'inventive' and 'pretty'?"

"Ha! You may ask, Mister Spock, but you can't tell! Well, we had been on the wall the whole day. It was crazy exposed and the dry wind had scraped us all raw. My water bottle had been empty for hours and I was so hoarse I was having trouble communicating to them what I needed. They hadn't meant to sandbag me, I think I just wasn't at my best because I was already reacting to the virus. So, finally we were close to the place from which we could rappel down to the camp. On that last pitch Lia went first, as always, off the lead. I was the lead with Farn belaying. The big obstacle was a large vertical crack. When I hit it I could see that whereas Lia had had trouble with the toeholds,_ I_ had no way of reaching any of them. I could see several fingertip holds, and then a good landing place beyond the crack, where Lia was waiting."

Kirk shifted against some discomfort but seemed too engrossed in his story to notice.

"I knew I'd have to do it fast, or I'd run out of finger strength. I looked over at Farn who was fifteen feet below me and five feet to my right. He too was hanging on by one hand and one foothold, and he was bracing himself because though he'd put in a belay anchor, we all knew I'd shock load it too much if I fell. We exchanged a nod and I started. It went well but I got dizzy on my last swing out and missed the last finger hold, in a nasty undercling crack. I fell back on my right hand and just couldn't find the strength to pull myself up. My hand and arm started shuddering and I just had time to pull out my axe before I let go, Lia screaming. I scraped that axe down the rock face like a giant fingernail along a blackboard and it hooked up right when I came level with Farn. The pull nearly dislocated my shoulder but I kept a good grip on it. Craziest self-arrest technique I ever did! It took me a minute to gather my wits, hanging on by the one arm and the adrenaline. Then I found a foothold and Farn reeled me in. He had to lead and found a better crossing. They laughed real hard and told me never to do that again."

The Captain's voice had become hoarse in the telling, but he was happily gazing at the ceiling, remembering this. Spock nodded, storing away each and every detail. Then he said,

"And then I presume you took nourishment. Did they bring the provisions?"

Kirk frowned. "I guess so."

"Do you remember partaking of food?"

Kirk rolled over onto his side and elbow to look at Spock gravely.

"I don't recall, no. We must have eaten, had a campfire. I love campfire cookouts. But I don't remember… Is that normal? Is it the amnesia?"

The Captain was obviously worried. Spock kept a neutral countenance.

"I do not know. It could be that you remember the climbing incident because it made a deep impact, and that all the other details are still concealed."

"I do remember some other adventures that made a deep enough impact!" Kirk blurted out. Then he blushed. Then he frowned again.

"So far you have mentioned Lia and Farn," Spock offered. "There was another Xylian male, what was his name?"

Kirk 's concern turned to alarm.

"Another-No, there was only Lia and Farn."

"You mentioned a third Xylian in your debriefing. A third was also found in the wreckage, in the desert."

"I-impossible—" the Captain stammered, red in the face. "I don't remember at all!"

"Maybe you will if you recall what happened the next day," Spock said quickly. "Perhaps he played a larger role on that day."

Kirk rolled back onto his bunk. His chest was rising fast. He rubbed his eyes again

"Do you wish to continue, Captain? This may be too tiring for you at this point."

"No, no, let's pursue it. Let's see, the next day… We were at a different wall, much more difficult. It scared me. I wasn't feeling well at all. At the end of the day my muscles were all twitchy. Lia gave me relaxants-"

"-She gave you drugs?"

Kirk looked stunned. This was something that hadn't come up in the debriefing, something the Doctor should have known. "Yes," he said. "I'm sure she did but I don't remember… But I got pretty banged up on that climb. I just can't remember _how. _Spock, you'd think I'd remember why I got beaten-"

At that word all the color on his flushed face drained away and he clutched his stomach.

"Jim! Are you alright?"

"I didn't feel well," Kirk groaned. "I mean I don't feel well-"

His body slammed into the fetal position.

Spock hit the communicator button next to the bed and bellowed out "Medical emergency, Captain's quarters!" before turning to the wracked body of the Captain.

00000000

Again they stood at that observation window.

"He is stable," McCoy said. "I've put him into a deep coma and his brain chemistry is returning to normal. It's nothing like last time. And there is not one trace of the virus in his system."

"But the seizure was the same, if less severe."

"Yes. You said he was telling you what happened on his shore leave? The mind is a funny thing. In the state he was in – heavily drugged, exhausted – bringing up those memories may have triggered the symptoms even though the cause wasn't there. That is probably also what his nightmares did: summoning the memories of his old seizure to such an extent that it became real for his present body, even though there was no physical reason for it. Even his bizarre brain chemistry mimics the effect of the virus when it crossed the blood brain barrier and attacked the medial temporal lobes." McCoy threw up his hands. "I certainly can't find anything that _I _can detect that accounts for it!"

"What about his amnesia?" Spock persevered.

"Well, the virus primarily attacked the hippocampus, which is most closely associated with episodic memory. Some of that damage will not be undone."

"And now, Doctor?"

"This coma seems to be working, just like it did back then. Like I said this seizure wasn't as severe and of course there is also now no full-scale viral assault. I'll take him out of the coma when he's back to normal and then – whatever he says – I'll keep him here for observation. It's all we can do for now."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

/ Captain's log, Stardate 3710.4.We have taken up orbit around 409-73, a Class D planetoid that lacks an outer atmosphere but that, due to certain internal biological processes, has developed a livable environment in its immense cave systems. Science Officer Spock and Chief Geologist Selk have located a large vain of Dilithium ore. They are readying to beam down to take a sample to check its purity and to scout the cave for the viability of mining it. I intend to join them. /

Kirk found Spock and Selk assembling the equipment in the transporter room.

"Captain?" said the First Officer. "There is very little horizontal space to beam down to. I suggest that Geological Engineer Selk and myself go."

"C'mon, Spock," Kirk mumbled. He was tired of being treated like a porcelain heirloom. McCoy had declared him fit over a week ago, and that after an excruciating week under observation in Sickbay. "You're going _caving_ and you thought I'd stay away? Besides, you're going to need someone else skilled in rappelling to help you with all that equipment. Scotty, is there room for one more?"

"Aye, Capt'n," Scott said reluctantly, keeping a wary eye on the Captain. "I've found ye a spot. Just line yourselves up with the equipment on the back pads and do get yer bearings before taking a step."

Knowing that if Scott or Spock alerted the Doctor it would be all over, Kirk quickly pulled on his harness, strapped on his helmet with headlight and took the last pad on the left, next to Spock. He briefly glanced at the Vulcan, who remained looking straight ahead.

"Energize, Mister Scott," he ordered.

He was not prepared for the heat, the stink and the earsplitting din in the pitch-black dark. He reeled and his panic pushed him off balance even more, but a strong hand clasped his arm and held him in place.

"What's that noise," he gasped, barely audible even to his own ears, but Spock had heard him.

"I believe they are bat-like creatures, Captain," he yelled.

Confirmation followed when Selk turned on the floodlight. The cave was vast. Going by the echoes, what they could see of it by their light was only a fraction of its expanse. The air was thick with millions of bats, swarming in great whirling clouds, screeching and clicking.

Kirk shivered despite the hot, humid air.

"Our arrival has disturbed them," said Spock, finally releasing his arm. "The minerals in the rock must have masked their life readings. Make no sudden moves and they should settle down." He lifted his tricorder slowly, adjusted its volume to zero, and started scanning.

"The air here is foul," Kirk shouted, trying not to breathe in the strong ammonia stench.

"It is safe for now, Captain," Spock yelled, "but we cannot stay too long."

Kirk looked gingerly down, over the ledge which began at the toes of his boots. In front of him gaped a black nothingness. Heights didn't bother him, but the bats were another thing. They kept flying at him and retreating at the last possible moment, their wings almost brushing his face. Their claws looked fierce.

_I'm probably in their space, _he thought, but there was nowhere to go. Fortunately, the general commotion was dying down rapidly. Then a glint caught his eye. Spock's head light on its sweep had reflected off something in the rock wall.

Spock had seen it too and rejoined his light to his.

"The crystal! It is massive!" Selk called out.

Selk aimed the large floodlight and the ore flashed brilliantly. Kirk swallowed. It ran on, like a river, as far as they could see.

"There." Kirk pointed at a narrow ledge some fifty feet down and twenty feet to his left. He was pleased. Scotty had put him the closest, so he would have to go. "It's large enough for two. An easy descent. We'll top rope it."

Spock handed him the tools and he set to hammering the first anchor into the rock, creating an echoing racket within the cave, but to his relief the bats didn't rise up again. Then he threaded his rope through the anchor and hooked himself up. He swung the backpack over his shoulders before he hooked on another carabiner and passed it to Spock.

"Looks like it's you and me, Spock," he beamed.

"Indeed, Captain," Spock said dispassionately.

For a moment they looked at each other under their head lights. They were so close that Kirk could see the black flecks in the Vulcan's dark brown irises. Suddenly, what was going to be fun and a great opportunity for trust building turned fearful for Kirk. It was almost a recoil reflex that sent him swinging off the ledge on his rope.

Concentrating on the task at hand, he descended a couple of feet and swung out to reach a small finger hold – brushing past roosting bats, trying not to touch them. Adding anchors at intervals he felt would be comfortable for Spock, by far the less skilled climber, he soon reached the ledge. He set up the final anchor and Spock followed.

The air seemed more stifling after the exertion. He wished they had brought masks and oxygen.

He moved over for Spock to touch down with the tool box.

"Are you alright, Captain?" Spock asked, seeing Kirk's grimace.

"This stench is getting to me. Let's hurry," Kirk said, glad to be all business.

They had to work very close shoulder to shoulder, the ledge barely large enough to accommodate their feet. Kirk held the tool box open for Spock. It was cumbersome. He was glad he was tethered to the wall.

Spock used the sonic incisor deftly, cutting out chunks of the crystal, then grasping them with the calipers and dropping them in the pack on Kirk's back. They didn't need much, but Kirk was eager to be done with it. He had to blink repeatedly to move the sweat out of his eyes. The incisor was heating up the rock and roasting the already stifling air. The toolbox was getting slippery in his hands.

"We will soon be done, Captain," said Spock, and Kirk heard the concern in the Vulcan's voice. "One more piece-"

Abruptly, the bats went berserk, but even the torrent of their screeches couldn't drown out the booming sound deep, deep down in the cave. Kirk's heart stopped when he looked down and saw, impossibly remote, a glowing red well up. The massive floor of the cave, miles down deep, had suddenly turned to bubbling liquid. Within seconds the boom barreled past them along with a blast of searing heat and a tremor that shook the ledge, the wall, the thick air.

Kirk dropped the tool box, grasped his line with one sweaty hand and threw his arm around Spock just in time to keep the staggering Vulcan from falling backwards. At the same time Spock turned towards him and the incisor grazed his cheek.

Gasping, Kirk pulled away from the singing sharp beam. Then he caught Spock's eye and it was like a lid slammed down on his brain and pain and fear swallowed him up entire. He lashed out to get away from his enemy and over the edge he went.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Spock gripped the line with one hand and with the other reached out for Kirk, who was falling away fast, propelled by some frantic terror and no longer holding on to his line. He caught hold of the shoulder strap on the backpack just as the Captain also lost his footing and added a jerking downward movement to his escape.

_Escape._

Spock was dragged down but kept his grip on the line and his foothold. By the way the Captain's body skated off the ledge, swayed and then crashed into the rock wall beneath, Spock knew he had lost consciousness.

By now the atmosphere was unbearable even to him. He looked up to see Selk dematerialize. He would have to pull Kirk's lifeless body up and over the ledge to his own level for Scott to be able to beam them out of there. He took a moment to take a breath of the dense air and to grind the heels of his boot harder into the ledge.

Then he saw that their time was up. An immense fireball was rushing up at them from the depths. In the surge of adrenaline his Captain was like a feather. Then he felt the familiar tingle of the beam and his last thought was of Jim's utter panic and fear _of him_.

000000000000

Spock was thankful that the Captain was still unconscious as the Doctor treated the wounds on his face. Kirk had sustained many scrapes and bruises as he had slid, lifeless, over the sharp ledge and slammed into the rock wall. But even the most serious injury, the cut of the incisor which had nicked the zygomaticofacial foramen, could not have been the cause of his unconsciousness.

"Don't blame yourself, Spock," McCoy murmured, concentrated on his delicate task.

The Doctor was of course still under the impression that Kirk fell because of the incisor accident. That is how Selk had seen it from a distance.

Spock stiffened as McCoy now applied an instrument to that wound that looked very similar to the incisor.

"Doctor, the Captain didn't fall away from me. He _fled_."

McCoy looked up.

"What?"

"After the incisor cut him, he was still safe on the ledge. But then he looked at me, and something changed. He looked at me with horror, like I had-like I was his worst enemy. Then he _threw_ himself off the ledge and, for what reason I do not know – because the air wasn't that bad yet, and the Captain has stood up to worse pain than this – he lost consciousness even before he sustained these other injuries."

McCoy frowned down at Kirk. "Was it a seizure?"

"I do not believe so."

"Well, his brain chemistry is certainly normal," McCoy remarked.

The Doctor put his instruments aside and dabbed the wound. Spock knew that in less than an hour the marks would be gone. But now he feared there was an injury to the Captain's mind that was too deep, too great to heal with conventional medicine.

He followed the Doctor into his office.

"It may have been the environmental stress after all," McCoy suggested after he had closed his door.

"Doctor, the Captain stands up to much worse stress and every time it galvanizes him. This situation was similar to the climbs he made while on shore leave. I think this episode was somehow related to what happened on Xyla."

"Spock, you seem to know more about what happened to him on Xyla than I do, but-"

McCoy stopped himself. The subject of the sundering of the Vulcan link between Spock and the Captain had almost become a non-issue where Kirk and McCoy were concerned, but the Doctor now realized that for Spock it must still loom large.

"Can you confirm, Doctor," Spock went on unruffled, "that the Captain exhibited no seizures or any other symptoms related to the virus during the one hundred and fifty-seven days between the infection and his revelation of his sleep deprivation?"

"I would say that, yes, Spock. Really the only trouble during those one hundred and fifty-seven days was _you_."

"Indeed, Doctor," Spock said. "And what happened right before the onset of the bad dreams? Or a few days before that, assuming that the Captain suffered these dreams before he reported them?"

"I don't know," McCoy grumbled impatiently, "but I have a feeling you do."

"The _Enterprise_ received two orders. One, to investigate 409-73 and, two, to transport the Ambassadors to the Babel conference."

"So? What do those have to do with Xyla?"

"You said it yourself, Doctor, that the seizures could have been triggered by a reminder of something in his memory that is suppressed, namely the event of his infection, on Xyla. The trigger in the case of the nightmares was either the mention of 409-73 or of the Babel conference. But the trigger in thepresent case was _me._ And I was not present during his Shore Leave."

"But you were there at the end of it and in a big way too. Also, there was climbing involved…" McCoy was out of patience. "Look, Spock, why don't you do a mind meld. He's unconscious. It wouldn't hurt him."

"That is out of the question, Doctor. We discussed it and neither of us felt it was right. And to do it now, without his knowledge, would be unconscionable. One thing is certain, Doctor. I cannot remain on board as the First Officer."

"What!" McCoy hissed. "We've gone over this before, Spock."

"I beg to differ, Doctor. As you never cease to point out, up until now it was _I _who kept a certain distance from the Captain. This time it was _he_ who showed fear, even _hatred_ of me. This is what I have been suspecting, despite the Captain's hope that we might overcome this, that there is a great distrust between us."

McCoy stared at him. "How can you say that, after all the work he's put into your friendship!"

"_Doctor_." Spock held up a warning hand. "I appreciate all that work. And it has not been in vain. But something is fundamentally wrong and I can no longer stand by and hope that it will go away. In fact, I can no longer stand by and _mourn_ the deterioration of someone so dear to me!"

McCoy was struck speechless by the Vulcan's vehemence.

"What will you do?" he asked after a few seconds' silence.

"I am going to do what I should have been doing all along. I am going to find out what happened."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

McCoy was relieved when Kirk regained consciousness on his own, fourteen hours after the incident on 409-73. He hurried to the Captain's bedside as the latter's eyelids fluttered open and his gaze focused on the Sickbay ceiling.

"Oh, not _again_," he groaned.

It was hard for McCoy to look down upon his friend, so vulnerable – too discordant with the Kirk he knew. This spate of crises weighed on everyone on the ship, and the burden was about to become even heavier for the Captain.

What had Spock called it? _The deterioration of someone so dear to me._

"It's alright, Jim," he soothed.

"What happened?" Kirk whispered, softly, as if he was afraid of the answer, but it was also a genuine question.

McCoy frowned.

"You tell me."

"I-I don't remember," Kirk whispered. Again, that painful glint in his eyes.

For a moment it seemed to McCoy that, lying on the bed were two Kirks, one knowing and afraid, the other ignorant, confused.

"You and Spock were on 409-73, taking samples of the Dilithium."

He stopped there and waited for Kirk. Nothing changed in his drawn face.

"There was some sort of volcanic eruption. The atmosphere became toxic and there was a tremor. Spock accidentally cut you with the incisor."

Confusion growing into a panic.

"I—I don't remember. He _cut_ me? I don't remember, Bones!"

And then Kirk did an incongruous thing. He touched the exact spot on his cheek where Spock had injured him, a spot that McCoy knew was fully healed and could not be sensitive. But again McCoy dismissed it, for the Captain was fast becoming too agitated and about to set off the biobed alarms.

"Calm down now, Jim," McCoy said softly, laying his hand on Kirk's shoulder and effortlessly holding him down on the bed. "Calm down. Your memory might return-"

"Was it a seizure? A relapse?" Kirk said, fear in his eyes. He was already out of strength.

"I doubt it, Jim. It was just the bad air. And Spock didn't think-"

"-Where _is_ Spock?" Kirk interrupted him.

Of course the Captain had become used, again, to the Vulcan being there when he awoke from unconsciousness. McCoy cursed inwardly, then broke the news.

"He left, Jim. He's gone."

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Getting from the small mining post where the _Enterprise _had dropped him off to Star Base 6 proved no great problem, and from there on to Xyla was even less of an issue, as there was a lot of traffic between the Base and the pleasure planet. Still, Spock knew that each day, each hour mattered. Though he could have hopped on a transport, he went to considerable expense to procure a shuttle for himself.

He had arranged for counterfeit papers so that on Xyla he would become Aster, a Vulcan trader in the precious stones that the Xylians were so fond of. The lady Amanda had supplied a small cache of those gems. Spock was grateful to his mother, who had not needed any persuading upon hearing Spock's account of Kirk's strange amnesia and his final, suicidal reaction to her son.

He had contacted Ambassador Zent and the Xylian High Council before leaving the _Enterprise_, inventing a routine follow-up inquiry. They had sent him detailed dossiers on the three adventurers and on the three bodies found in and near the van in the desert. The files indicated a positive identification of HazLia, LakFarn and his brother, LakTaurn. Spock had scrutinized the image of HazLia. She was without a doubt the female Xylian he had seen at the Captain's drop-off. Doctor McCoy too had identified her as the "witch" who had seduced Kirk away.

As McCoy had pointed out, it all seemed "on the up and up so ditch that crazy scheme of yours and be here when Jim wakes up 'cause he'll need you."

As Spock slotted his shuttlecraft into the landing line-up, he remembered his momentary doubt. Yes, Jim would need him. But though it grieved Spock that he had once again seemingly deserted the Captain, he felt more in control than he ever had, since Xyla.

He set his jaw. He really had no idea where to begin.

000000000

/ Doctor's Personal Log, Stardate 3841.1. We are _en route_ to pick up the next group of Delegates, a pair of quarrelsome Tellarites. Though he is poised and his most charming self, I am concerned about the Captain. The last months have been extremely hard on him, and Spock's departure just seems like an unnecessary kick when he's already down.

My main problem is that Spock persuaded me to keep the truth about what happened on 409-73. The Captain is struggling with too many contradictions and gaps in his mind already, and I agree that knowledge of his suicidal response to Spock would just add to the chaos and possibly send him over the edge.

So the official story is the one that Chief Geologist Selk witnessed: Spock accidentally injured the Captain with the incisor and that and the poisonous air and stress in the cave made him lose his balance and consciousness.

Of course this also means that Spock's departure is unexplained. Jim refuses to call it a betrayal. His generosity, I shamefully admit, greatly surpasses my own. I am still convinced that Spock is pursuing a cockamamie hunch. Hunches are for the Kirks of the world, not for Vulcans.

But the Captain has been symptom-free and swears he is not suffering from nightmares, headaches, or any of the ailments on the exhaustive list I put to him. He absolutely refuses to discuss the issues now and has thrown himself into the preparation and now execution of the delegate transport to Babel.

I hope Spock finds whatever he's looking for soon, because though I see Jim pulling off his important mission with flying colors, I doubt that, once it is accomplished, there will be anything left. /

0000000000

"Yeah, I know 'er," snarled the Xylian. He jutted out his chin, showing Spock his rotten lower teeth. Spock steeled himself. All Xylians were somewhat reptilian in appearance, but the older and more decrepit, the more prominent the resemblance. "So? Whazzit to you?"

Spock slid the representation of HazLia's image into his jacket and was once again jostled by another "client" at The Crow, the crowded bar that was really only a front for a brothel.

"Can we move our dealings outside?" he suggested to the Xylian, wondering if the man could even walk – he could barely stand.

"Yeah? Dealins, huh? " he perked up. "Wha you got?"

"Plenty for your information," Spock answered in a low voice. He doubted he'd get anything out of this swaying addict, but he followed him outside anyway.

The brothel was situated in a slum at the heart of the city and the lineup of characters frequenting the curb were no less shadier than those inside. But at least there was more space, and the air was somewhat fresher. And in the triple moonlight he could scrutinize the Xylian better. He was obviously not in good health, his skin a dull and scaly grey. He remembered the inner, pulsing glow of HazLia's skin. How would this person know her?

Spock's discrete inquiries among Zent's disgruntled aides had soon revealed that the Ambassador was an incompetent gambler who had been uncharacteristically flush with credits since the _Enterprise _shore leave. But the Ambassador had managed to keep the source of his newfound riches carefully hidden. Spock had entered a streak of dead-end tips and shady informants. This dealer in narcs was his last resort.

He was also aware that time was running out, that the longer he nosed around, the more conspicuous he became. Any more of these wasted opportunities and he would jeopardize his cover and lose whatever prey he might be hunting.

"She no longer 'ere," the Xylian said after he had pocketed Spock's measly bribe – the more he descended in the underworld of the pleasure planet, the cheaper his information became.

Spock gave the old Xylian his most withering look. Among these dregs of a people, Vulcans with their steel discipline and mysterious abilities were held in awe.

"Is she still alive?" he intoned.

"'live?" the Xylian repeated fearfully. Then he burst out laughing. "As 'live as a pokash flea on a pokash hoss!"

It took Spock a moment to recall that pokarish fleas had the ability to revive after even centuries in a deathlike state, and that pokarish horses were their favorite hosts.

"Where?" he asked, feigning indifference.

"Wrong questin, mista Vulcan. _How much?_"

Spock gave him twice the amount of scrip he had already handed over.

"Lives in the X quadran, that girl does, in the castle- thanks mista Vulcan-"

In a second he had slipped back into the bar. Spock could see him slithering through the crowd, then disappear out the back. He sighed. Thrown-away money. But he knew of the quadrant, the most affluent suburb of the city. "The castle" didn't ring a bell, but he could check it out. There was nothing else to do.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"Hahaha, gentlemen! _Lady_," he inclined his head deferentially to the Queen. She smiled up at him with doe-like eyes.

McCoy didn't know what to feel. He wanted to feel that old begrudging admiration. Yes, that's my Captain, James T. Kirk, and my best friend. He also wanted to feel that old exasperation. Sure, he's a charmer, a seducer. But you can stake your life on it that he's also a good man, kind and courageous. A good man.

At present McCoy felt neither pride nor jealousy nor peace. Spock's injunction haunted him:

"Keep a close eye on him, Doctor, during the Babel mission."

He watched Jim's proud, easy bearing, the crinkles around his eyes as he presented the Queen his small, pursed smile. He took her hand on his arm and guided her to the Observation Deck's window, began pointing out the stars. He was all hers. The diplomatic incident had been averted by the Captain's quick wit and fairness to all, and the cogs of his peculiar kind of diplomacy were to be greased some more.

"Doctor, if ye frown any deeper ye'll implode like the Star of Shawain and I cannae be certain that the _Enterprise _could handle the rebound!"

"Mister Scott," McCoy sighed, welcome for the interruption of his ungracious thoughts.

"May I prescribe a brandy, Doctor?"

"I think that would be appropriate, Engineer."

When McCoy next looked around the room, the Captain, and the Queen, had left.

00000000000

The Castle turned out to be a large building complex in the Quadrant, called so because it looked like a fortified citadel. And the fortification was anything but decorative whimsy. The Castle was home to the prosperous and powerful of the planet. The respectable media magnate lived next door to the mafia thug, the official bureaucrat and the interplanetary hit man.

As was to be expected, it was a heavily gated community, but the hinges were easily greased for the Vulcan dealer in precious gems. All Spock had to do was present his credentials (false), any weapons he might have on his person (none), and a good amount of scrip (nonrefundable).

Wrapped in his cloak, Spock spent the day roaming the crowded citadel. Business, large and small, was booming. He kept a low profile, observed merely, refrained from interviewing anyone about HazLia. His cover was already worn too thin.

It was twilight when he spotted her, exiting a luxurious villa through the back door.

It was she, without a doubt. Though all Xylians, male and female, shared that changing, expressive skin, each had their own subtly different range of colors. Spock remembered the profound emerald of her energetic mood. Now that she was relaxed she was a light jade. The observation was easily made, for in the fashion of all young Xylian females she was scantily dressed.

Her movements were lissome, gracious, self-assured, and unhurried. Spock had no problem following her unnoticed. He did nearly lose her at the gate. The Castle guard seemed to know her and let her through without a word, but Spock, obviously in haste, was asked to part with a disproportionate amount of scrip.

No matter. It was _she, _resurrected, while his friend was dead.

After a frantic minute he caught sight of her again. She was turning in the direction of the thronged city center. He wasted no time. When she passed a deserted alley he was there. He grabbed her arm, clasped a hand over her mouth and pulled her into the dark recess of a back entrance.

He gripped her bare upper arm like a vise expecting her to fight or slip away with that fluid body of hers, but to his surprise she ceased all resistance and even moved closer.

Suddenly he understood. She was already pouring her chemistry, what they called "ling," into him. He raised his shields instantly, glad for his newfound mental discipline. Had he been weakened like before, he'd have had no choice but to let her go. Or, worse, he would have become putty in her hands.

"Did you bewitch my Captain so?" he blurted out, tightening his grip, even shaking her a little.

In her eyes he could see she realized that her weapons were ineffectual. But the beginnings of the angry surprise there never kindled. Instead, she stood looking at him with a proud outrage.

"_Bewitch_?" she huffed. "A strange choice of words for a Vulcan."

"The word is that of Captain Kirk's physician, and not incorrect, I now perceive."

"His physician? O I remember him… Yes," she stated proudly, "I _did_ bewitch your Captain. But he in turn bewitched me."

It took Spock several seconds to process what she had said, seconds during which she looked into his eyes, daring him to understand.

"You are a LingXyla," he voiced, his throat constricting. He had thought the LingXyla to be a mythical creature, but looking into her brightly mocking eyes he now knew her to be real: the Xyla who does not just infuse her victim with her ling, but also absorbs his or her chemicals in return.

Now he did let go of her arm, like a match stick burned down to his fingers.

She laughed aloud, but her laughter was not unkindly. And neither did she run away.

"I see you have done your homework, Vulcan. Yes, my _witchery _goes both ways. Why do you think I am so coveted by the thugs and the admirals at the Castle? They enjoy my pleasure ling while spewing their hatred and pain into me. Like that they take _twice_, you see."

Spock said nothing. The bitterness and violence of her indignation was a sight as her emerald skin flashed with red, scintillating streaks. He also knew that his shields had been only partially adequate. He had neutralized the pleasure ling she had forced upon him, but in the meantime she had stolen from him _his_ chemistry. And how well she could read that Vulcan chemistry, she now divulged.

"You love him."

Spock drew a breath. Her words were not cruel – in fact, she had said it with approbation. But to hear them spoken aloud, so simply, was a shock to him.

"I love what he was," he whispered.

"Then that makes two of us," she said.

With that all her bluster faded, just like the red in her skin retreated into a cheerless celadon green. Spock understood, with a jolt, that she knew exactly what he had meant and so knew, in fact, what had been done to the Captain.

"Though the vilest of men bought me," she continued in a low voice, "to pleasure him, and though he was surrounded by evil and in great pain, he gave me the best, the kindest and strongest of himself, unstinting."

"Then why did you do it!" Spock lashed out, barely able to control the volume of his voice.

She shook her head, set her jaw against shame, or remorse. "It was too late. I did the best I could for him, even though it fit their detestable plan. And that-" She paused, deliberating with herself. "And that," she repeated, "will be all you will ever know!"

She sprang away, and all Spock could do, before she rounded the corner, was shout out in desperation:

"He mourns you!"

Then he fell to his knees, because she was gone and with her his last chance of finding out what had been done to his friend, the last chance of undoing it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12 **

Kirk was rudely awakened when he fell out of his bunk, hard. Wedged awkwardly between the bed and the wall, he held his breath for a few seconds, but nothing happened. Just a plain old dream. He exhaled with relief and then laughed out loud at the absurdity of the Captain rubbing his rump after taking a tumble out of his own bed.

Well, his night was over. It was three more hours to the beginning of his shift – though, honestly, his present schedule was so irregular he couldn't remember the last time he had been anywhere on time. Luckily the _Enterprise _ran itself. Even without a First Officer.

The danger, if he could call it that, was all on the inside of his ship, on decks Four, Five and Six to be precise. There the delegates moved like particles of matter and antimatter with the Captain interposing himself in a usually timely and graceful manner. He was good at it, he knew, but he hated it. He hated how it sapped his energy, how at times it became downright demeaning.

Chuckling no longer, he dressed and took a deep breath before stepping out into the congested corridor. The whole ship was overrun with Ambassadors, Councilors, Generals and Royalty, and their spouses and medical advisors, servants and security personnel, astrologists and whatnot.

Kirk considered he hadn't seen his friend, the Doctor, in over twelve hours and hurried into an empty turbolift. He spoke the words "Deck Seven" like the name of a lover. Deck Seven was home to Sick Bay, the medical labs and briefing rooms and was lacking in residential and guest quarters.

But he found the corridor to Sick Bay unusually thronged with all manner of alien races arranged in an unruly queue. Ignoring the protests, Kirk cut the line and strode straight in to find McCoy throwing a fit.

"Don't these people have health care at home?" the Doctor yelled at Nurse Chapel.

"What's going on here, Doctor?" Kirk intervened before the edgy Head Nurse could respond.

"_Captain_ Kirk!" the Doctor snarled, as if Kirk was the offender. "Our _guests_ discovered that Star Fleet gives free medical care, that's what! Everyone from the Nubedian Empress' maid to the Tellarite mechanic-"

Kirk tried to contain his smile.

"Don't _smirk_, Kirk! I'm gonna run out of Asinolyathin and Hydrocortilene real soon, so don't come running to me when this bunch of addicts gives you a headache!"

"Okay, Bones, calm down," Kirk hurried, reaching out with a conciliatory hand. "I'll issue a general notification that there will be no more dispensing from Sick Bay."

"Thanks," McCoy grumbled. Then he looked more closely at the Captain. "What brings you here, Jim?"

"Oh," Kirk sighed. "Nothing really, it's just that you're usually stuck on me like a leech on a fish and I was kind of missing you. Also, I fell out of bed and… Well, I see now that you've been busy–what?"

He was rudely pushed by the elderly humanoid female who could curb the interference of the rude Captain no longer.

"I'll get out of your hair," Kirk mumbled, backing out.

"Do something, Captain!" McCoy called. "Oh and hey - _Excuse_ me, Madam! - you up for dinner, Jim?"

"Dinner," Kirk called, getting the hell out of there.

000000000

Rigid with self-control, Spock managed to navigate the dark streets and return to his hostel without attracting attention. He turned on the light in his room and started packing right away. He rehearsed each movement in his head before he performed it, keeping his wild mind on a tether so taut he knew if it snapped he might not even make it off the planet.

Placing the few garments into his bag he noticed how his hands trembled. He looked down on them, not comprehending, then started wringing them cruelly.

_He had failed_. He had let her bewitch him with her lies. She was long gone now, and with her what few traces might have remained.

His desire for self-punishment erupted cruelly against his mental shields and he didn't know what he would have done had he not suddenly become aware of a presence in the room.

He spun around.

"I will take you to that place," she said breathlessly as she swooped down on him like a large blue bird.

He shrank back and down to avoid her touch and she copied his movement till they were both crouching in the corner of the room.

"They are on to you, SpockVulcan," she whispered, her eyes wide. She was very close but taking care not to touch him. "Your life is in danger."

"How do you know my name?" was all he could think of. His voice was rough with the seesaw of despair and hope.

"Zent was on to you the moment you arrived and as you weren't too careful you and I were seen. They contacted the ones who hurt KirkJim and they will be here soon to destroy all the evidence, you and me included. Meet me at the Crow in ten minutes. Walk out as if you're on your way as usual, then give the two humans the slip. If you can't, then _don't come_, for both our sakes!"

With that she drew away from him, on all fours – a lizard–like creeping – toward the back window of the room. She opened it and slid out in one smooth motion. He followed her, staying low, and peered over the ledge into a four storey drop, in time to see why the Captain had admired her climbing skills. Then she was gone in the narrow alley.

Staying low he hurriedly gathered his essentials: his phaser, communicator and tricorder, what scrip he had left, the gems and the card to his shuttle. These all fit under his cloak. Then he stood up in the corner of his room, smoothed his clothes, and walked past the window, out the door.

The city was full of humans from the Star Base, but in this touristically challenged neighborhood they stood out sufficiently for Spock to spot them right away. He had the alleys and buildings memorized by now and found no problem gaining entrance to a derelict shack after rounding a corner, blocking its door behind him, then escaping through the front of the building before they broke through or made their way around.

The Crow wasn't far off. Its doorway was crowded as always, and Spock observed it from a dark corner across the street, wishing her instructions had been clearer. Was he supposed to go in? Standing there, deliberating, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. It was the old Xylan who had sold him his lead to HazLia. Not sure of his intentions, Spock shrugged off the clawish hand.

"Come with me, Vulcan," the Xylian grumbled. He sounded and looked like a man reluctantly, fearfully doing someone a favor.

They made their way through the jam-packed bar, into the brothel part, up a dingy flight of stairs. His guide knocked at a door on the landing. It was opened by Lia.

"Pay him, Vulcan," she ordered after letting them in. She turned to grab a large pack off the stained mattress.

Spock counted out one hundred scrip while trying to read the unspoken message on Lia's face.

"Give him your shuttle key too," she added, almost frivolously.

Spock frowned but did as he was told. The Xylian literally lit up as he palmed the card. Then he turned and without another word left them.

"He'll talk," Spock warned her.

"Of course he'll talk. But it'll be too late because he'll collect your shuttle and hide it first. It is useless to us anyway. It was bugged from the moment you arrived on this planet."

"So they will follow him…" Spock concluded, appreciative of her plan.

"Not for long. I've got a vehicle of my own waiting. Let's go!"

She shouldered the pack and, to Spock's dismay, disappeared over the windowsill again. He looked out and saw that that side of the building bordered many small shacks, which she was using like a giant stairs. He jumped over and found no difficulty in following her into the night.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

At the end of a long day Kirk cautiously stuck his head around the corner. He found Sick Bay empty except for McCoy and Nurse Chapel.

"Jim!" the Doctor beamed. "I don't know _what_ you did, but it did the trick so you have our sincerest thanks!"

"You're welcome," Kirk tried, blushing deeply.

"Ah," McCoy sighed, "you didn't do anything, did ya!"

Kirk winced a little. "Sorry, Bones, I forgot all about it. I vaguely remember mentioning it to Chekov, but I can't recall telling him to do something…"

"O-oh," McCoy said dramatically. "Well, whatever _he_ did, it worked." His jubilation was no longer so carefree. "Hey, you okay?"

Kirk was looking particularly lost. In his pale face the dark shadows under his eyes spoke of severe lack of sleep. His most lavish military uniform, replete with medals – a bit too much for dinner with the ship's sawbones, McCoy thought – could not conceal the slumped shoulders, the bone-tiredness of the man.

McCoy took him by the elbow intent on steering him into his office to have a private talk before dinner. But the Captain resisted.

"I came to tell you I can't make dinner," Kirk sighed. "The Hokai organized a reception and I'm the guest of honor. To refuse would be interpreted as an act of war. Sorry, Bones."

McCoy cursed inwardly. He remembered something about someone falling out of bed…

"At least tell me what's going on. You look exhausted."

Kirk scoffed weakly.

"They just won't leave me alone. I am summoned every five minutes. I disengage my chime at night but some of them just bang on the door! Scotty's been a treasure, doing _my _job while I play the lackey. I detest it. Why isn't Spock here!"

He had blurted it out and now bit his tongue.

"Jim-"

"-I gotta go, I'm gonna be late."

McCoy stood looking at the door after the Captain had walked out. Maybe, he thought, he should get himself invited to this party. He resolved to finish up the order for the Hydrocortilene and then to join the Captain at this shindig.

00000000000

Her shuttle was nothing like the vehicle she'd used to transport the Captain. It was new and powerful and allowed them to make good time across the dull white sands of the desert. They traveled through the last hours of darkness and into day break.

Spock knew from his previous visit that the deserts were uninhabited and unpatrolled by a police force that was anyway almost non-existent on this planet. More importantly, the pulverized desert minerals interfered with long-range sensor scans and automated navigation. These were no doubt some of the reasons for bringing the Captain here, and they would serve Spock and his guide as well. Still, Spock surmised that their enemies would arrive on the planet shortly, with shuttles as fast as, if not faster than theirs.

He wondered out loud why Zent wouldn't come after them. His guide snorted at that.

"Zent's long gone if he has any brains. I'm sure they ordered him to kill me but then he was quite… dependent on my services."

Beyond telling him her real name, or at least the name she chose to tell him – IlnZahi – that was all she had said since their launch from an unmarked pad near to The Crow. This suited Spock, as he recalibrated his mental balance and thought through the implications of what had happened.

What were Zahi's motives? Obviously her own life was in danger. Having been seen with him would have put an end to her special position – LingXyla or not. Her best option would have been to bail out, but did she have the means to do so? Also, there were precious few places where a Xyla like her could blend into the crowd. Was that why she had sought him out, for Federation help? It didn't make sense, because surely she knew that, at present, he was not able to protect her. Indeed, she was protecting him.

Or…

From what little he knew, Spock inferred that Zahi would have known Jim, after some exposure. LingXyla, it was said, as truly absorbed the other's essence as the other took up what the Xyla choose to give. Zahi had had her share of ugliness and pain from the clients she served, and Spock did not doubt that her experience with Jim Kirk would have stood out in great contrast to that suffering.

He looked at her askance. She was flying the shuttle on manual, as the controls went haywire with the sands' interference. The dusty green color of her skin indicated that she was relaxed, though focused.

"Will you tell me what happened, IlnZahi?"

She heaved a sigh of resignation. Keeping her eyes on the desert beyond the darkened screen – the flats were giving way to dunes and rocky outcroppings - she told him.

"We picked him up at your lodge and brought him to the Wall. Our task was to tire him out. Not to kill him, of course, which almost happened."

"I know," Spock said. "He told me that part. He thought he was sick by then. Was he already drugged?"

"Yes. We had slipped the drugs into his water supply and they kicked in faster than they had said they would. So we almost lost him. He is strong, your KirkJim. He has reservoirs of strength that are hidden even to him, until he needs them. So it turned out. They took him right after we rappelled down. He was shaky on his legs and heavily outnumbered, but he fought them tooth and nail. They were careful with him, so he did pose a challenge. It didn't matter in the end. They brought us to that place, the place where we're going."

"You and the brothers, LakFarn and LakTaurn?"

She shook her head.

"LakFarn was like me, paid native help under a pseudonym. He navigated the van to that place while we went in the fast shuttle. But there was no LakTaurn. I mean, he was one of theirs, only disguised as a Xylian. There's no cosmetic surgery in the universe that can convincingly replicate our living skin. He stayed on the sidelines because KirkJim already suspected something and we had to tell him he had a skin disease. I did see him without his disguise, later-"

Her lower lip trembled in sudden anger and she bit down on it. Then she stared out the shuttle screen, frowning, and made no indication of wanting to continue her story.

"You must tell me who they were, IlnZahi," Spock pushed softly.

She wheeled around to him with eyes ablaze and the green in her skin flaring brightly.

"_They_ were also disguised as Xylians," she scowled, "but I swear they were not. What race they were I do not know, none that I have ever seen. But LakTaurn, he was like you. He was Vulcan."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

_Vulcan_.

Spock swallowed, sickened.

"They took him into that place," IlnZahi continued, keeping a narrow eye on his reactions. "They went in and told me to wait outside. I camped with some of them, but I kept apart. I didn't see him that evening or night, but I heard him. I heard his screams. Before the sun rose in the morning of the second day one of them ran out and got me. I didn't want anything more to do with it, but I was scared and there was no escape. And also, SpockVulcan," she pleaded, "I wanted to stay there for him. By the time they came for me he had been quiet for a long time. I wanted to know if he was still alive, and of so, I wanted to help him. I rushed in. He was… I was with him, and I made him feel better, as best as I could. But you will see for yourself what it was like. There it is."

She pointed at a spot near the foot of a rock wall hundreds of feet high. It was a small bunker almost buried in the sands. She brought in the shuttle and set it down some fifty feet away, in the shadow of the precipice.

When Spock jumped out he sank up to his ankles into the sand, the density and consistency of which was like toffee. His trudge to the bunker was laborious. Zahi had no such problem. It was like she was walking on water and she had overtaken him in no time.

By the time he reached the platform in front of the bunker's narrow metal door, she had opened it a crack, but now it was stuck against the sand. Livid with anger and frustration, she was trying to scoop the sand away, but more of it just flowed back in.

"Zahi," Spock said, and when she didn't listen, he put his hand, carefully, on her bare shoulder. "Zahi, let me."

She stood aside with a huff. Spock gripped the door and yanked it open, glad that he could contribute to the effort.

The bunker smelled of grotto, cool and humid. Zahi slipped into its darkness. Spock could tell from his tricorder readings that no one was inside. After a minute the lights came on, revealing Zahi at the end of a long, steeply descending corridor, next to a fuse box and another metal door.

"This one is locked, SpockVulcan," she called.

"Step outside," called Spock, and when she was behind him he blasted the hinge with his phaser. The door broke off and fell to the concrete floor with a crash.

"They must have been assured of their secrecy, to leave all this here," Spock remarked as they walked into the first room, a large room with tables and chairs, three cots along the walls.

"All this is Zent's," Zahi informed him. "He uses this place for his more discrete interrogations. But _they_ brought new equipment. I don't know if they left it. Immediately after they were done with him they sent us – KirkJim, LakFarn and me – to your pickup point in the van."

She went through the next door, which stood ajar, and Spock followed her into a control room of sorts. There was an open door, a computer bank along one wall, and a console underneath a narrow observation window.

Drawn to the window, Spock looked through. What he saw made him breathe in sharply.

"_Res nullius_," he sighed.

"Res what?" Zahi asked.

Spock cleared his throat. "_Res nullius_. It is a term in an ancient Earth language that my Captain is fond of. It means 'what is annihilated'."

They stood for a few seconds in silence. Then Spock moved past her, into the chamber.

00000000000

McCoy was just about to head to his quarters to get dressed up for the party when the door opened to the Chief Engineer.

"Hey, Scotty, what brings you here?"

Montgomery Scott dithered in the doorway, concern battling embarrassment on his weathered face.

"He was fallin' asleep at the party, Doctor," the embattled engineer explained, "right over his dinner. He was gonna _keel right over_ if I 'adn't put me hand on his shoulder! So I insisted he come here."

Right on cue, the subject in question sauntered in, looking both sheepish and exasperated. McCoy saw through his nonchalance immediately.

"I thank you, Mister Scott," the Captain huffed, "for your concern, but I was just taking a nap."

"_Lad_," said Scott firmly, "it is hardly appropriate for the guest of honor at a Hokai event to take a nap!"

"-Gentlemen!" McCoy interrupted before Kirk could respond.

But before he could ask how Scotty had managed to extract Kirk from the situation without provoking interstellar war, that infuriating chime sounded.

Kirk strode to the wall and slammed the button.

"Yes! Kirk here!"

"Uhm, Captain," Sulu said, a little stunned. "A shuttle craft is approaching. Code 2-10, Captain. Arrival time, five minutes."

Kirk frowned. "Thank you, Mister Sulu," he said extra softly by way of apology to his helmsman, "start the procedure. I'm on my way."

Looking from Scotty's to Kirk's face, McCoy was afraid to ask.

"What's code 2-10?"

Kirk merely grunted in annoyance.

"It's the last thing we need, Doctor," Scott answered, "a code specially created for this mission for a delegate who for some reason of their own devising wants to remain unnoticed and incognito. A pain in the backside if ye ask me! They arrive without warning, we have to clear the shuttle bay and the corridors to their special quarters, where they – aye - _hide_ themselves, demanding constant but discrete catering to, and when we arrive at Babel we get to do the whole thing in reverse! And we don't even get to ask them why!"

"Only the Captain and the First are allowed to lay on eyes on them," Kirk added.

"And the Chief medical Officer, surely?" McCoy protested. "After all, there could be a medical emergency, right?"

"I know _I_'m about to commit a medical emergency before long, Doctor!" Scotty blurted out, exasperated.

It brought a grin to Kirk's face.

Now, standing at attention next to Kirk while waiting for the shuttle door to open, McCoy felt acutely underdressed. Kirk was still wearing his most formal uniform with the gold braids and the medals pinned on. McCoy wished he had at least changed out of his plain blue shirt.

"I'm not wearing my special getup," he remarked out of the side of his mouth.

Kirk grinned a little. It was most infuriating, but it did the Doctor good to see it.

"They came unannounced, Bones, so they'd better not grumble."

The shuttle hatch opened slowly and a small staircase touched down on the hangar deck. A Kodelai appeared. It – the Kodelai were humanoid but asexual - proceeded down the staircase and without acknowledging the two officers present performed a quick inspection of the bay. Then it called into the shuttle and another Kodelai came out. By its dress McCoy judged it to be the big wig.

Kirk stepped forward to meet it.

"I am Captain James T. Kirk. Welcome aboard the Enterprise."

"General Naren of the Kodelai Fleet, Captain. Have you the 2-10 procedure in place?"

"Yes, Sir. My First Officer could not make it, but this is Doctor McCoy, who is just as indispensable to me. I hope you don't mind the substitution."

To McCoy it seemed as if Naren hesitated for a second, possibly in response to this news. But whether it was because it was expecting Spock or because it was annoyed that the Vulcan had been replaced by a lowly physician – not even in dress uniform - or even because that was simply its manner or that of its species, McCoy couldn't discern. In any case, the General simply turned to the two persons exiting the shuttle behind him.

"Not at all, Captain. This is Naresh, my secretary. And Varek, my very own Vulcan First."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The Doctor snapped his mouth shut. He glanced sideways at Kirk for assistance, but found the Captain pale-faced, staring wide-eyed at the Vulcan.

"Captain Kirk," said the Vulcan, slightly sardonically, slowly dropping his chin.

McCoy felt acutely uncomfortable. He expected Vulcan arrogance but it seemed to him that Varek's dark stare was deliberately daring, even mocking Kirk. And Kirk was suffering it with nary a squint.

Another second and McCoy would have had to rescue the situation, but then the Captain recovered.

"Welcome," he managed to say. "Forgive me, General Naren, Commander Varek. I was not aware Vulcans served in the Kodelai Fleet."

McCoy frowned. While Naren's smile was congenial, the Vulcan's little smirk gave him the creeps. And Kirk's habitual grin was entirely absent.

"Shall I accompany you to your quarters, General?" Kirk said quickly, trying to move past the awkwardness.

"There is no need for that, Captain," said Naren. "Varek has memorized the layout of your ship and he will guide us there. We value our privacy and independence, Captain. I except code 2-10 will be respected throughout."

"It will, General," Kirk said sharply, straightening a little.

To McCoy's great relief, that was that, and the three guests filed past and without another look exited the bay.

"Did you see that Vulcan _smile_, Jim!" McCoy burst out.

Kirk, white in the face, took a few steps, put out a trembling hand to find support against the bulkhead and lowered his head.

McCoy – alarm bells ringing – placed his hand on Kirk's shoulder, ready to catch him if he fainted.

"I'm alright, Bones," Kirk whispered. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and again McCoy observed the trembling hand.

McCoy bent down so he looked up into Kirk's face.

"Tell me the truth now, Jim," he said softly, "have you had any headaches, nightmares, body cramps, or seizures?"

Kirk drew a tremulous breath and looked askance at the doctor.

"No," he said, finding his voice. "A headache, yes, but just because I'm tired. These delegates harangue me day and night, and I'm always breaking up their spats."

"But the way you reacted to the Varek, Jim—"

"-That's because-because of Spock."

"Okay," McCoy said with all the resoluteness he could muster. He knew if he showed pity it would be a lost cause. "Come to Sick Bay with me."

Kirk too straightened himself.

"Doctor, I _told_ you," he began in steely voice.

"-that all you need is a good night's sleep. So what's the quietest place on the _Enterprise_ since Chekov spread the rumor that some nasty Ostroid bacteria escaped the lab."

"Ost-" Kirk gulped. "Isn't that an STD!"

"Well, _I _wasn't thrilled about it either, Jim, and who knows what he was thinking, but it did the trick, and not just in Sick Bay either. So what about it, Captain? Wanna catch some shut-eye in one of the private rooms?"

"Okay, but on one condition. You keep those hypos and scanner away from. O, and _don't_ turn on the biobed monitors!"

"It's a deal."

McCoy beamed, and Kirk couldn't help but absorb some of that smile.

00000000

At the center of the small room stood a metal table large enough to hold the average adult humanoid. It was a high table, slightly tilted. One end was close to the wall, pocked with sockets and plugs, monitors and dials. The table was studded with restraints.

His heart pounding, Spock stepped forward and reached out to touch one of the straps, then retracted his hand in horror.

"What is that?" Zahi asked, indicating the shallow, narrow gutter carved into the surface, outlining a humanoid shape.

The table seemed to mock him. Spock applied the tricorder to it and it confirmed his suspicion.

"What kind of pain," he asked, "what kind of death do we warm-blooded beings fear the most?"

IlnZahi thought for a moment.

"Death by fire," she said.

"Indeed. This table is for the Sintin torture. A liquid called Sintin is poured into this" - he pointed at the gutter, and as he spoke he slowly traced its shape with his finger. "The gutter fills slowly, all the way round, and when the liquid meets itself, it expands up and over the person on the table until it encloses him, trapping him in a cocoon of pain. The pain of being burned alive. It leaves no marks and, depending on the stamina of the victim and the drugs he is given, it can be sustained for hours. Days."

Finally touching the table, Spock lowered his eyes.

"All the cultures of those who require warmth have an ultimate terror," he said, keeping his voice low for fear that it would crack, "the punishment of burning eternal in the fires of hell."

Zahi stared at him, horrified.

"Poor KirkJim," she whispered. "I heard him scream. Yes, I would scream so too. But why?"

Summoning all his discipline, and all his anger, Spock broke his reverie, turned and walked back to the control room.

"They wanted to break him. But _why_ indeed…"

"Did they want information from him? Secret information?"

"Possibly," Spock murmured. He sat down at the console and began feeding the computer instructions. "These databanks have been hastily, carelessly erased. I might recover the information."

00000000000

_I wake up to that nightmare. I'm on the table in the middle of the room, in the maw of suffering. I can't move, can't cry out. Why? Why? I can't take it much longer. Don't give in! It will end soon, it _must_. He's coming. O God I fear the release as much as the torment. He will try again and I don't think I can fight him any longer. No, don't come near me, don't-_


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's note: **At this point I am upping the rating. What do you think?

**Chapter 16**

Chapel rushed into McCoy's office.

"Doctor, the Captain!"

He was up in an instant but hesitated at the half-open door. He heard a suppressed moan. He slowly pushed the door open onto the small, darkened room.

The light fell on Kirk's face, a dark mask on a desperately held back scream of agony. Then his wild eyes found McCoy-

The Doctor rushed to his side.

"Jim, wake up!"

He grasped Kirk's upper arms. The muscles were hard as granite. Kirk was stiff as a board and lay as if he was nailed to the bed. He was looking up at McCoy with horror, without recognition.

"Wake up!" McCoy yelled, shaking him as hard as he could.

Kirk's eyes finally connected with reality and he cried out, gasping for air. For a second his body was released from the terrible strain, but then a spasm moved through him. McCoy could feel it rippling under his hands.

"Two-hundred milligrams of Asinolyathin!" he called out to Chapel. She was right behind him with the hypo. McCoy administered the injection and a few seconds later Kirk's body slumped back.

McCoy switched on the biobed monitors and listened to the steadying heartbeat. All signs indicated that they had narrowly averted a seizure. Chapel stood by with a respirator but McCoy held off and Kirk's breathing settled by itself. Incredibly, he had not lost consciousness throughout the whole ordeal.

He had slept for only two hours.

"Bones!" Kirk gasped.

McCoy knew that this was where the anguish kicked in. He took Kirk's hand and made a small gesture to Chapel. She retreated, closing the door behind her.

"You had a nightmare, Jim. It's over now."

"I was in this room!" Kirk stated, his voice raw. He was concentrating with a ferocity that he couldn't afford. "No! In a room like this one."

"Jim, just take it easy-"

"-No, dammit, _listen_, Bones," the Captain persisted, grabbing onto McCoy's sleeve, "I can _remember_ something for once. I was in—in terrible pain. But I can't-it's like a-like an orphan memory. Without context. It's like remembering someone else's memory!"

"Jim, you need to calm down. You _were_ in this room - well, the one next door. Your memory is of the time you spent in there recovering. If it's returning, it's a good thing."

Exhausted, Kirk let his head fall back, but McCoy could see he wasn't letting this go. His red-rimmed eyes roved the ceiling, looking for something.

"I was in such pain," he murmured, as if he couldn't believe it.

"You _were_ in pain."

"But there was… _anger_!"

"You're always angry when you're sick, Jim," McCoy said gently.

"No, no, listen! There was…"

The frown between his eyes deepened. Though he had calmed down, McCoy still didn't like the intensity of his effort, or already didn't like what Kirk might find.

"… Humiliation!" Kirk blurted out.

He swallowed and sought out the Doctor with eyes in which surprise was turning into horror.

"I felt humiliated and b-betrayed," he whispered.

"By whom, Jim?" McCoy asked, against his better judgment.

Kirk thought for another couple of seconds, the sweat beading on his forehead, his breathing ragged. To McCoy it seemed like he suddenly knew-

"I don't know!" Kirk spat with a sudden rage, beating his fists on the bed. "But I'm _angry_, Bones, I've never been so angry in my life! And I don't know why-_I don't know why!"_

McCoy held his friend for as long as he had to, and when he passed out from exhaustion, he lay him gently down and prayed that he would be granted a good measure of sleep.

00000000000

After hours of manipulating the databanks, even Spock was stunned when the video and audio suddenly broke through. IlnZahi, who had been napping in the corner of the room, was instantly up, her green skin flaring with red.

"Turn it off!" she screamed, her hands flying to her ears, unable to tear her eyes off the screen.

The room was filled with the hellish noise of Jim Kirk's shredded voice,

"Spo-ock! Spo-ock!"

The image on the screen was of Kirk strapped to the table. He was entirely enveloped by a thick, transparent skin of living, liquid metal that swirled and eddied over his body. Through the sheen Spock could see the Captain's every muscle taut to snapping with exertion. His face was ravaged with the agony, his lips were bleeding. His eyes would haunt Spock to the end of his days.

Spock had seen Kirk in pain before, and he knew that _this_ Kirk was very close to breaking.

Spock punched a button and the image froze. The room fell abruptly silent but for their labored breathing.

"We must bear witness," Spock said softly to himself. "We must find out what they did, and why."

He turned down the volume and rewound quite a long way to the beginning. Then he pressed start.

He saw the Captain brought in by four aliens disguised as male Xylians. Kirk was drugged and his struggle was pathetic as he was stripped of his clothes and lifted onto the table. His captors were careful, even gentle with him, and Spock knew they wanted to avoid leaving marks of aggression. To that effect they also wrapped his ankles, knees and pelvis with a soft padding before strapped them down tightly.

They did not lay him all the way down, though, but held him up by his arms and shoulders. He was so disoriented his head fell painfully back when one of his guards failed to support it.

Three others entered, dressed in green medical coats. One attached sensors to Kirk's temples and chest and several beeps started humming, one of which Spock recognized as the human's heartbeat, reassuringly strong and regular. Another administered several hypos to the Captain's arm.

From his somewhat upright vantage point in the arms of his guards Kirk was getting his bearings. Now he saw the first green coat wheel a small table closer. The biomonitors registered his alarm and the guards tightened their grip as he squirmed.

Spock felt his stomach constrict with disgust.

On the table were several coils of tubing and some slick, metal instruments.

Kirk was helpless as his head was pulled back and his nasal passages were suctioned. He gasped for air while the first green coat measured a length of narrow tube from his nose to his ear to his xiphoid process. Then he renewed his struggle when the other approached with the metal scope. Instinctively he knew to close his mouth and lock his jaw, but his assailant held his nose and with his first gasp for air forced the scope into his mouth and deep into his throat. He immediately inserted the tube into Kirk's left nostril and pushed.

The Captain winced. His panicked eyes teared up and blood started dripping from his nose. The green coat, looking through the scope while his helper manipulated their victim's head and jaw from behind, tried to maneuver the tube past the Captain's pharynx.

Kirk went crazy. He started pulling and shoving against his captors, gagging and moaning to resist the passage of the tube. It was to no avail, yet he kept up his struggle after they removed the scope from his mouth and continued to push the tube down his esophagus into his stomach. When the tube was finally all the way in, Kirk retched and they allowed him to vomit painfully into a bowl. The sputum was streaked with blood.

All the while Spock had wished the Captain would stop fighting it. But now Kirk became utterly unresponsive and Spock wished he would give a sign of life beyond his ragged breathing. They cleaned him up and taped the tube to his nose. Then the guards gently lowered him and fastened the padding and restraints over his wrists, upper arms and neck and forehead.

The third green coat, who had stood by all this while, watching, now approached. He was carrying with a vat of a mercury-like liquid.

"Is that it?" Zahi whispered into her hand, clasped over her mouth.

"The Sintin, yes."

"But they haven't even asked him a question or demanded any information!" she protested.

"They are not interested in any," Spock said. Then: "I don't think the Captain knows what is about to happen to him."

The vat was tipped and the gutter slowly filled. Spock's hand hovered, trembling a little, over the stop button, but he did not bring it down. He closed his eyes and heard the already hastened beep-beep go mad. When he opened his eyes, he saw Jim Kirk burning.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Spock witnessed the Captain's brave attempt to remain silent, but seven and a half minutes into his agony the pressure was too much and he let loose, screaming in anger a thunderous _No! _Spock pressed the fastforward button and concentrated on the chronometer in the corner of the screen. He slowed the tape again two hours into the ordeal. Jim's _No!_ had lost that anger. But it had become more efficient, more beneficial. Now the _No!_ was the Captain's mantra, a way of calling to himself, of concentrating, and of denying what was being done to him.

The life support systems indicated that the extremely elevated blood pressure and heart beat were being sustained with the help of what Spock suspected were stimulants, administered regularly with hypos and probably through the tube as well, along with liquids to keep him hydrated. Still, Spock marveled that the Captain continued to be so defiant. Any other human would have begged to be delivered by now. But then Spock thought to himself that Jim Kirk had always had an unusual relationship with pain. It often gave him strength and courage.

He sped up the playback again. Another three hours and fourteen minutes - an eternity for the Captain, condensed to 50 seconds for Spock – and something happened. The green coat who appeared to be in charge bent over the Captain's face.

Spock zoomed in. Kirk was no longer making a sound, but the look on his face, the concentration in his eyes, staring straight up through the Sintin skin, and the sounds of the life monitors told Spock he was very much conscious and indeed tightly controlled.

The alien said something. Spock paused the playback, rewound, and played it again, several times, at the highest volume. Zahi came to stand behind his shoulder.

"_Shulash_? Is that what he said?"

"They spoke Xylian with you, Zahi?"

"No, Standard. They never spoke their language when I was there. What does it mean?"

"I do not know. The Universal Translator is not recognizing it."

Spock pressed the start button. The green coat tripped a lever and the fiery shell slid off the Captain's body as its fuel drained from the gutter.

Kirk wheezed with the shock of his release. His body, glistening with sweat, started trembling all over and the monitors went wild. The alien gave him an injection while putting a restraining hand on his chest. With purring alien sounds he talked Kirk through his panic. The Captain calmed and finally took in his aggressor.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely. "Why are you doing this?"

Despite himself, despite his knowledge that this was far from over, that worse was still to come, Spock's heart leapt at the sound of his friend's voice, strong, furious, _himself. _Then he realized that this was the first time Kirk had been able and allowed to ask that question.

"You must take rest and nourishment," the alien said in monotone Standard. "Then we will start again."

Kirk fought his restraints in protest, but the aliens simply ignored him as they tilted the table up and started pumping a white slurry straight into his stomach.

Not that the Captain took advantage of this respite. All that time he kept up his questioning and demands.

"Why are you doing this? I demand an answer! I am James T. Kirk of the _USS Enterprise. _I am a Federation officer. You are in violation of Federation law!" And so on.

At some point he switched to making crude remarks and he even smirked.

Zahi laughed out loud when she heard a vulgarity she recognized.

Spock did not see the humor. He was angry at his Captain for wasting what little strength he had left. But then he understood. Strapped motionless and naked to a table, at their mercy, being force fed and not even being told the reason for his abduction and torture, Kirk was asserting himself the only way he could, by speaking out, even by joking. Not for them – indeed, the aliens went about their business wholly ignoring him – but to impress upon himself his own identity, which after so many hours of the Sintin torture would have crumbled in any other human.

"He is recharging himself," Spock murmured with deep admiration. "He knows more is coming and he is renewing himself."

After half an hour the aliens removed the empty food receptacle and Kirk went quiet for a moment, catching his breath and steeling himself. When he saw the vat approach the monitor registered the acceleration of his heartbeat, but he remained in control of himself.

"Why," he stated to the air as the gutter filled.

It was not a question. It was a word for the task he set himself, his mantra during the session that followed.

And so after _No_, the soundscape to Jim Kirk's torture became _Why._

0000000

McCoy, always a light sleeper when he was watching over a patient, woke to Kirk stirring.

"Bones?" Kirk said sleepily. He raised himself on his elbows. "What are you doing here?"

He was looking at the Doctor with a fond and mystified grin.

"Ow," McCoy moaned as he straightened himself in his chair. These vigils at Jim's bedside were hard on his back.

"I'm really thirsty," Kirk discovered. Before McCoy could move he had sat up, leaped off the bed and bounded over to the water fountain.

McCoy was torn between relief to see so much vitality returned to the Captain and the misgiving that something was very wrong.

"You don't remember at all, do you?" he said softly.

Kirk finished the last of his water and looked quizzically at his Doctor.

"Remember what?"

For a moment McCoy didn't know what to answer. Kirk had just displayed, very clearly, the dissociative amnesia that the Doctor had believed he had witnessed a couple of times already. He thought of the countless times when, in the absence of time to process the loss of a friend, family or crew member, or even deal with physical pain, Kirk had seemingly forgotten the cause of his grief or injury. Perhaps this too was such a forgetting, one of Kirk's astounding self-preservation mechanisms. As it was always temporary and dealt with – in Kirk's own way – later, McCoy wondered if he should spare the Captain his concerns.

He glanced at the clock. Kirk had slept six and a half hours since his breakdown. His_ mental _breakdown, McCoy reminded himself.

"What? Bones?"

Looking at him, standing there, at ease, smiling that charming smile, McCoy knew he had to be careful.

"I'd like to run some tests, Jim," he tried. "You're under so much stress-"

"You mean _psychological_ tests." Kirk laughed with amusement. "I thought you had to rewrite them each time you ran them on me? Spare yourself the trouble, Bones. I feel great. I slept," he glanced at the clock, "_nine_ whole hours! If I go and shower now I might actually get to spend some time on the Bridge."

He was already at the door. McCoy got himself up from his uncomfortable chair.

"You shouldn't have stayed with me," Kirk said, taking pity on the aching Doctor. "I was fine. I _am _fine. Dinner, okay?"

"Dinner," McCoy grumbled to an empty room.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

McCoy and his emergency medical team arrived at the mess hall right in time to hear Kirk give what was to become known as The Justice Speech. As soon as McCoy joined Kirk, kneeling next to the wounded Hokai, and took over putting pressure on the stab wound, the Captain rose like – it seemed to McCoy - a tornado.

The din of the shouting delegates abruptly ended, and even the two alien security men who had started shoving each other ceased their hostilities.

Kirk was livid and it showed. He raised his soldier's body to the height of a president, set his jaw to the task of one too, and took his time to catch each and everyone present, irrespective of race or rank, in the glare of his fury.

"I have had _enough_," he finally spoke in a low voice, "of your squabbles and vendettas. As the Captain of this vessel I cannot condone such despicable behavior!"

Someone moved to raise a hand, but the Captain stopped him cold by a chopping gesture of his hand – McCoy found even Kirk's hands fierce, covered as they were in wine-red Kodai blood.

"I understand that there are the perpetrators and the victims, the purposeful provocation and the inevitable reaction," he said softly, in sharp contrast to the outrage that immediately followed. "But neither do I have the _time_ nor is it _my_ duty to sort out who is who and which is which! It is not _my_ duty but your very own, and neither I nor my staff will do your duty for you. A person lies wounded here and the one who inflicted the blow will be apprehended. But there is a context here and it is _your_ duty to investigate your own roles with the honesty and integrity that are demanded of advanced races. Look into yourself and be your own judge, for better or for worse, because it is in _your own_ selves that great justice lives – a justice that _I _may not arbitrarily replace. And if you _do not_ have the maturity or _courage_ to judge yourself, then please keep your irresponsible manners to yourselves until such time that you can vent them – respectfully and in the full glare of all assembled – in the voting chamber."

He did a quick swipe of the room, looking into the very souls of those assembled, but with an indifference now, just to see if there had heard him.

"Gentleman, ladies," he finally intoned. And with that he turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

The crowd remained silent for a minute, with many glances skimming the floor. Then slowly people started voicing their opinions. Outright admiration exceeded disapproval. The latter had effectively been rendered unpopular by the Captain's speech and so was suppressed. When security Chief Kyle stepped forward to demand who had delivered the stab wound – which McCoy had already ascertained was superficial – the perpetrator sheepishly stepped forward and let himself be taken into custody.

McCoy would have loved to have stayed to sample the reactions in the room. But he had to at least accompany the wounded Hokai to Sick Bay, where M'Benga would do what little was required.

As soon as the patient was off his hands the Doctor inquired Kirk's whereabouts of the computer and was told the Captain was in his quarters. McCoy set out right away. He wanted to congratulate Jim on his brilliant speech and share his hopes that it retain its effect until the end of the mission.

00000000

In the blur of speeding images something happened. Spock paused and rewound. He checked the chronometer. Another eight hours and forty minutes had elapsed since the last interruption. At this point the Captain had been under stress at the Wall and in excruciating pain in the bunker for over twenty-seven Earth hours. On Xyla, with its twenty-eight hour rotation, the first sun was about to rise again.

Still the torment was unrelenting and, held up by the stimulants, Kirk was still undergoing it in full. He was silent again, in that eerie state of meditation while the monitors registered a heartbeat and blood pressure that were supernaturally high.

The alien pressed the lever and the fiery skin slipped away.

Kirk gasped again, but his response was less violent this time, simply because his body lacked the strength to react. His new state was far from painless. The knots in his muscles were frightful to behold and what little strength he had left was being lost to wracking muscle cramps. His skin, slick with sweat, was covered in angry red blotches. His breathing came ragged through lips that were cracked. His dilated pupils roved the space like a concerted search light, desperate for something safe to latch onto, to come to rest in.

The green coat proceeded to remove the strap and padding from the Captain's forehead and wiped his face.

"Water," Kirk croaked.

The intranasal tube was feeding him liquids, but Kirk had had little comfort for swallowing or wetting his lips. His head was lifted and a small amount of water was squeezed into his mouth.

In the meantime the other green coats held a short, hushed conversation in their susurrant language. Then the leader summoned someone else. When this person entered Spock only saw his back, but he knew immediately that this was the Vulcan.

"He is ready," said the leader in his monotone Standard.

The Vulcan turned to stand near the head of the table and looked down on the Captain. Spock zoomed in. Kirk's gaze had locked on to the Vulcan's eyes and were anchored there, defiant, furious.

"I am not so sure," the Vulcan observed.

"He is ready," the alien repeated, without inflection.

The Vulcan seemed to shrug. He bent over Kirk.

Spock slammed the pause button.

"What?" Zahi demanded. "Let's see what happens, SpockVulcan!"

"I know what happens," Spock said coldly.

He felt all tight inside, like his heart had contracted to a fist and would not let go of its stone hard anger even though it was strangling itself. But he forced himself to keep talking, knowing he had to talk it all out, talk through it.

"This is why the Vulcan is there, to perform a mind meld. They want to plant something, a memory, a desire, a command. The torture is to weaken him, to break him _open_ so the meld can happen." He turned to her, appealing to her puzzled face. "It would have been very difficult, IlnZahi! The Captain can tolerate an extraordinary amount of pain, and I have trained him to raise mental shields against unwanted melds and found him an exceptional student."

He looked back at the screen, at the hovering Vulcan. Still he could not bring himself to press the start button. Finally Zahi did it for him.

The slender left hand came down on the side of Kirk's face. The fingertips of his left hand started feeling for the optimal touch points. Spock knew where they were, with the Captain: three points near the temple, one on the cheekbone, one and the lower jaw.

"You can't do this!" Kirk yelled, and he started turning his head this way and that to avoid the contact. "I don't permit it! You can't do this!"

Spock nodded. "Yes," he murmured. "Break his concentration. Assert yourself against him. Break the silence."

On the screen, the Vulcan was undeterred. He held Kirk's head still with his right hand and one by one the fingertips of his left hand came to rest, on temple, cheekbone, jaw.

Kirk froze.

"You! Can't! Do! This!" he pushed out, word for word. Spock, and maybe only Spock, detected the nascent fear in his voice, buried deep underneath a whole lot of outrage.

The Vulcan closed his eyes and Spock, and maybe only Spock, could see the doubt in his face. The Vulcan started up his own mantra in a low murmur and made it keep time with the Captain's now tightly controlled declaration.

"Our minds are one." - "_You-can't-do-this_!"

"Our minds are one." - "You-can't-do-this!"

The Vulcan's voice grew louder as he pressed on…

"Our minds are _one_!" - "You-can't-do-this."

"_Our minds are one!" _- "Our-minds-are-_fire_."

… and more desperate as Kirk's voice turned to steel…

"Our minds are _fire!" -_ "Your mind is fire."

"_My mind is fire!" - _ "My-mind-is-free."

With a hair-raising howl the Vulcan staggered back, whipping his hands away from the Captain's face. He held them up in front of his wide eyes. One of the green coats reached out to steady him, but he slapped him away. Enraged, unhinged, he flapped his hands as if to put out flames. He only regained his wits when Kirk chuckled, then laughed, louder, louder.

"I told you he's not ready!" the Vulcan sneered at the stunned green coats.

The Captain's laughter was suddenly strangled. All the bio alarms started wailing and James T. Kirk went into his first seizure.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

The Captain convulsed inside his constraints, rattling the table. His breathing was stuck in a tattered, arrhythmic pattern, a moan shuddered in his throat.

"What's happening?" Zahi cried out.

On the screen the Vulcan stepped out of the way of the green coats. They had obviously prepared for this eventuality. One held down the Captain's head, which was crashing against the table. The other green coat administered a preprogrammed hypo. Almost instantly Kirk's body tightened like a bowstring pulled taut. He held his breath. His eyes were wide open, staring, uncomprehending.

Spock knew what the Captain had done. He had forced the Sintin pain through the link straight into the mind of his Vulcan aggressor. But at what price? Had he lost his own mind, literally lost it, through the link? Or was it only his body that was losing control? And how long could he hold his breath like this? The bio alarms had blended into an uninterrupted monotone. Even the self-possessed green coats seemed at a loss as to what to do.

Then, like an angel of deliverance, Zahi stormed into the room.

"Oh!" sighed the Zahi sitting next to him.

Spock took comfort in the relief apparent in her voice, on her very body. She had been there, she knew what happened next.

The Zahi on the screen, however, had no such consolation. She was shocked and frightened by what she saw, but she instantly hurried to the Captain, slid onto the table and covered him protectively with her body. Her skin was flaring with streaks of deep, angry red. After a few seconds of contact however it abruptly turned to alabaster with delicately jade green veins, which Spock realized was the color of mercy.

Under her, Kirk breathed out and fell back against the table. The alarms stopped wailing. Spock could finally let go of the console, which he had dented in his furious grip.

Zahi whispered something very close to Kirk's ear and raised her head to look into his eyes. His mouth formed a word. Then she again appeared to ask him something, but with her eyes, and the Captain answered her with a smile.

It was so intimate that Spock refrained from rewinding and turning up the volume to catch their exchange.

"What did you say to him?" he asked softly, witnessing with a joy that was very much like pain the pair on the table, looking into each other's eyes.

"I asked him," Zahi answered, "if he wanted to die."

Spock tore his eyes away from the screen to look at her. She was smiling a sad smile.

"What did he say?"

"He said he wanted to live. Then I asked him to give me all his fear and pain, and he smiled and it meant that, no, he wouldn't. So I gave him the best I have, which is beyond pleasure, which is what you call love and we call ling in the original and purest sense. And he gave me his ling in return."

On the screen Zahi enveloped the Captain in her alabaster shield, tight like the Sintin skin but wholesome and healing. And Kirk smiled into her eyes.

"Does he remember _this_?" Zahi asked suddenly.

"No," Spock answered. "I regret he does not."

00000000000

When McCoy, bearing the Captain's triumph, arrived at Kirk's quarters, the chime was answered by an almost inaudible "Come".

"Jim, you _nailed_ it!" the Doctor hailed, punching the air with an exultant fist. "D'you think any of them will date to pick a fight anymore, even a verbal one?"

But Kirk, seated behind his desk, said nothing. He stared down, unsmiling. He looked scared.

"What?" McCoy said, triumph forgotten.

Kirk was still avoiding eye contact. He seemed to be debating with himself what he should break some bad news to the Doctor, and the Doctor wasn't having any of it.

"What!" he repeated.

"I _knew_ who started that fight, Bones," Kirk said, reluctantly. "I was _there_. I _saw_ who stabbed the Kodai when he stepped in front of…" He stopped, between a frown and a wince.

McCoy grabbed the other chair and positioned himself across the Captain. He waited for Kirk to come to the point. The Captain finally looked up.

"I was there, but I couldn't remember," he whispered.

"What do you mean, Jim?" McCoy asked. Dread was forming, growing like a tumor in his stomach.

"I suddenly… _found_ myself next to the wounded man. I found them yelling at me, at each other, demanding I intervene, but I-I _couldn't_. I couldn't remember who, what, how! I had blood on my hands and for a moment even feared _I_ had done it. Had they told me I had done it I wouldn't have been able to contradict it! What's happening to me, Bones? It's like-like my mind has turned to quicksand and whole chunks of me are sinking away!"

"Okay," McCoy stood, projecting a confidence that he didn't possess. "Come to sickbay. I want to scan your brain again. Something's going on and we'll get to the bottom of it."

Half an hour later Kirk was in the scanning room undergoing deep brain scans. McCoy and M'Benga monitored the results as they came in.

"Do you think it has to do with the Xylian virus?" M'Benga asked.

"I don't know," said McCoy. "The infection has been observed in plenty of humans and I read all those reports. Retrograde amnesia affecting the time of infection and recovery are present in one hundred percent of the cases, but Jim's RA is not following the usual patterns. Also _none_ of the case reports mention the anterograde amnesia he described. I've also observed in him at least one definite instance of dissociative amnesia."

"Look," M'Benga pointed out an area on the image that had just appeared on their screen, "the hippocampus. Let's compare it with the scan from right after the infection."

"Identical!" McCoy observed.

"This stroke-like damage was done by the virus - the Captain was certainly lucky that he received the antidote so soon. So, there has been no additional _anatomical_ damage and we are assured that he has suffered no strokes or neurodegeneration of any kind."

Seeing the images and hearing those words spoken were but small comfort to McCoy. The fact that they were now discussing the possibility of _dementia_ scared the living daylights out of him.

M'Benga put the image on the screen through a different filter.

"Look at this," he said. "His brain chemistry is certainly awry. The biophase protein folder is suppressed but the enphase folder elevated. It is almost the same as when the virus was attacking him. A mimic, then, just like when he had the dream-related seizures a while back?"

"It _looks_ the same. Does that make sense? This 'quicksand memory' he described is new, and it occurred when he was wide awake. I guess he may have had such lapses while not aware of them..."

"Well, the good news is that inducing a coma again will probably return his protein folders to normal," began M'Benga.

"But the bad news," McCoy finished his thought, "is that that will not solve the underlying cause-whatever that is. He'll relapse after a while and each time it will be worse."

M'Benga nodded his head thoughtfully. "I recommend, though, Leonard, that we induce the coma right away. According to these scans he is perilously close to a seizure - mimic or not. A coma might also suspend the advance, if such there is, of the underlying problem while we investigate further."

McCoy nodded thoughtfully, chewing on his lower lip.

"I tell you, he's not gonna like it," he said out of the side of his mouth.

For the first time in over an hour M'Benga beamed his customary smile.

"I know, Doctor, and that's why _you_ will deliver the message. And if he doesn't agree, you refer him to _me_."

McCoy guffawed. He knew that M'Benga knew that McCoy would never let it go that far. It was too painful for McCoy to see Jim defer to M'Benga without even a grumble after fighting McCoy tooth and nail.

The scan was complete and the technicians were helping the Captain out of the scanner. The Doctor took a deep breath and plunged into the fray.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

"I don't know about you, SpockVulcan," Zahi said, "but I need some fresh air."

Spock followed her silently. Their shuttle had no food replication or preparation facilities so they built a small campfire with a dry woody material they found stashed away in the long corridor of the bunker. From the shuttle Zahi got a receptacle with some soup-like nourishment, which she heated up over the fire.

After eating their portions they sat in silence in the shadow of the two suns.

"My Captain," Spock began. He stopped to clear his throat. "Jim Kirk enjoys campfires. He regretted he could not remember any from his shore leave."

"That's because there weren't any," Zahi said softly.

Spock glanced at her. She had said it with a self-forgiveness that could have come easy for her. She had had to witness, again, the suffering to which she had lured the Captain, and had had to be reminded that she had saved his life. Not out of fear or for scrip, but out of kindness, mercy. Spock felt an immense gratitude toward her. She was an impressive female and Jim Kirk would have found her that, and beautiful.

Jim Kirk had also forgiven her. Spock suddenly felt that it was important to him that she understood this.

"You saved his life," he said.

"It was the first of _two_ times, SpockVulcan," she said severely. "What you have seen has been hard on you but you haven't seen all of it yet. I only saw him once again, close to sunset and it was much worse than this."

Spock looked down into his empty bowl and nodded slowly.

"We must transfer all the recordings to my tricorder and leave this place before they come. We need to get this information to the Captain and stop him from acting upon what they put in his mind."

"But the mind meld failed," Zahi said.

"This one did. But he tried again and it worked. We know for a fact that he managed to erase the Captain's memory and replace it with false memories. Thus we can safely assume that he also planted the suggestion that was the reason for all this. I must also return for another reason. Clearly their original plan was to plant the command at the beginning of the second day and then to spend the rest of time scrubbing his memory and embedding the artificial memories. The latter especially would have been quite challenging. As for his physical condition, they would have fixed him up and maybe they would have staged a climbing accident. That and the strenuous exercise at the wall, both real and falsely remembered, would have accounted for his physical condition. But clearly they underestimated the Captain's strength. He held out much longer than they thought possible and they ran out of time. That is why they infected him with the virus. Its effects concealed some of the evidence of this treatment and explained the rest, like the seizures, the muscle cramps, the exhaustion _and_, most importantly, the apparent amnesia. When I left the _Enterprise, _the Captain was exhibiting symptoms mimicking the viral infection, and he was being treated for them. It is the wrong treatment."

"What is the right treatment, SpockVulcan?"

"I must meld with his mind and repair it. It is the only way. Then he will remember all the horror, but he will remember you too, Zahi." And then he added, almost inaudibly, "And me too."

His plan formed, he quickly stood and held out his hand to her. She grasped it and he helped her up.

It took him all of three minutes to devise a way of connecting his tricorder to the computer. But when he scanned the data banks, another problem arose.

"It seems like we will be here for a little longer," Spock stated.

"Why?" Zahi asked.

"Transferring these recordings would take only a few minutes. But there is a lot more here. I suspect none of it has anything to do with the Captain, but it would be expedient to know what else Ambassador Zent has been up to, as well as morally incumbent upon us to seek justice for his other victims. Downloading this amount of data onto my tricorder will take one hour and two minutes. During that time we can watch the rest of the footage and perhaps find out what this was all about."

Spock started the download process. But he did not press the start button. They sat, looking at the still image on the screen, each reluctant to move beyond the scene of deliverance on it.

It was Zahi who broke the silence.

"They let me be with him for a little while, until his life signs were stable. Then I had to go. I knew by then that his life might depend on me, so I didn't fight them. I hated them and I hated the Vulcan most. From the others I got no ling. They were just cold, like stones. But the Vulcan… I was glad he paid me no attention."

Spock nodded. He pressed the button. On the screen Zahi was told to leave by the leader. She touched her lips to the Captain's mouth, very tenderly, slid off him and left the room.

The green coat approached with the vat of Sintin. He said nothing, he simply tipped the vat. The gutter filled and Kirk frantically sought his next word. When the fire engulfed him, his screams erupted immediately.

Spock put the tape in mute and fastforward.

The Captain's word, his prayer, was _Lia._

00000000000

"No."

"Jim-"

"Absolutely not," Kirk said.

He looked as fierce as he had looked in the mess hall, only now his wrath was on McCoy.

Well, it wasn't going to work.

"Jim, you're _this _close to seizing again," countered the Doctor, steel meeting the Captain's ice.

Kirk wasn't going to give.

"But I'm not there yet," he stated coldly.

"No, but-"

"So let's wait." Kirk sighed, and added more gently, "Let's wait and see."

_Wrong choice of words. _

"What is there to _see_?" McCoy burst out. "You think it's easy for us seeing you deteriorate like this? To see you crash to the floor, convulsing, doing irreparably damage to your brain? Why the hell are you so keen on suffering!"

"I-I'm not," Kirk stammered.

McCoy cursed. He had knocked the Captain entirely off balance, and then some. He hadn't been fair. If anyone was to blame it was he. He hadn't been able to figure out what was going on. He was missing something. This wasn't some stab wound or a simple concussion, or even that darned virus that started it all. Why was Spock not here? Why hadn't he done the mind meld? Surely he would have seen what was going on? Could have helped! Damn Vulcan! Upped and left after all he put Jim through and left _him_ holding the bag.

He had to hold his head, literally hold it in his hands as he stood there, facing his friend, to keep it from bursting.

"Okay, Jim, listen," he began. He sighed. Tiredness and worry made him slur his words. It sure felt like he had to drag them out of his mouth. "You can run the damn ship from Sick Bay. That's as far as I'll go. You're gonna stay on the biobed with the monitors on."

Kirk was still standing there, still in confusion – _hurt_ - over what McCoy had said. Part of McCoy hoped the Captain would say what he felt, hoped _he_ could say what _he _felt. Something like _I didn't mean it_…

But Kirk straightened.

"Okay," he said, and then, grudgingly, "Thanks, Bones."

He moved toward the door.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?"

"Getting the files from my quarters," Kirk tried. There was not a fight left in him.

"Your yeoman will get them for you," McCoy said softly. "I don't want you out of my sight, Jim, I really mean it."

Kirk nodded, turned and walked to the private room. He stopped in the doorway, looked in with a strange expression of fear, even of growing panic.

"You can work in my office if you want and sleep in the Recovery Room," McCoy offered. "It's empty. The Hokai security man was released an hour ago."

Kirk nodded, turned again, this time in the direction of the office.

_By God, he's scattered like the leaves to the wind!_

"Thanks, Bones," Kirk said, with real gratitude this time, and he disappeared into the office.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Another four Earth hours of immeasurable suffering, condensed in sixty Earth seconds. Spock promised himself he would watch the recording in full, hour after hour, second by second, when he was back on the _Enterprise_, when the Captain was safe again. As a pilgrimage, and also, he thought with deliberate force, as a punishment.

For he had failed to watch over his Captain. He had failed to overcome his own pain to see the unfathomable pain eating at his friend. He had failed to take action until it was almost too late. Maybe too late.

And he had failed to sense _any_ of this while it was taking place. How could that be? All this time he had thought that his link with Jim Kirk was severed the moment Kirk was gripped by his seizure on the _Copernicus_. He remembered now with painful vividness the first days after that crisis. He had thought the Captain dead. He had rebelled against the idea that a virus could do this. But somehow he had let exhaustion and grief lull him into accepting the explanation that the virus had caused it by ravaging the Captain's brain.

Now he was convinced that the link was broken before then, before Kirk's torture ever began. But how? How could he not have felt the severance? How could he not have felt the absence of the link when the Captain arrived at the pickup in the dessert and boarded the shuttle?

None of this absolved Spock of his guilt. In fact, all these questions removed him even further from that path to self-forgiveness.

And in the meantime, brutal reality did not stand still. On the screen a green coat approached and Spock was forced to switch to normal playback.

The lever was pushed and as soon as he was free of the Sintin, the Captain was given a battery of injections. Spock surmised they were to stabilize his brain against seizures, to calm his muscle cramps, to keep him conscious. The head restraint was removed and a small amount of water was poured between his lips, which were now bleeding. Kirk endured it, unmoving, unspeaking. He was so weak he couldn't even swallow the water.

The Vulcan approached. He immediately found the meld points on the Captain's glistening, flushed face. The contact enlivened Kirk. He squeezed his eyes shut and set his jaw to the line Spock knew so well.

"Our minds are one," the Vulcan chanted.

Kirk remained silent. He no longer had the strength to speak.

"Our minds are _one_," the Vulcan spoke again, louder. "Our minds-are-_one_."

What was Kirk doing? Spock was sure that this time the Vulcan would not allow Kirk's pain to enter him. But Kirk was putting up a fight. And the Vulcan was losing.

"Our minds!" the Vulcan raged, "_are one_!"

The Captain opened his mouth and Spock drew a small breath, fearful of the words Kirk was about to say.

Then Vulcan and the Captain spoke as one.

"Yield" – "Yield."

"_Yield"_ – "_Spock_!"

The Vulcan disengaged, spun around and stumbled toward the wall, bumping into it.

Kirk's chest rose and fell as he drew shallow, laborious breaths. He was still conscious, but only because of the drugs. This time there was no laughter.

"I've _never_-" the Vulcan on the screen grunted, then he stopped. He straightened, turned back toward the room, and in an instant his face was cold again. "He has little strength left. And I will not underestimate him again. Another three hours."

Spock saw a glimmer of despair on Kirk's face, but it was instantly suppressed.

"We have reached phase three," the green coat observed.

"Infect him, then," said the Vulcan with a surprising amount of spite. "A pity. It might kill him and all our work will be for naught."

He walked back to Kirk, who was lying very still, almost cataleptic.

"You are strong," murmured the Vulcan, very close to Kirk's ravaged face. "But defeat is inevitable for you. Surely you know that."

Kirk's lips moved. Spock rewound, zoomed in and read Kirk's lips.

"Running out o' time," the Captain whispered. "My crew-"

"How much time do you think has past, Captain?" the Vulcan sneered. "Not even eight Earth hours. We have all the time in the world."

Kirk minutely shook his head. "Die first."

It was too desperate. The Vulcan had sowed a seed of doubt in very fertile ground and he knew it.

"You wish for death now, do you?" he whispered, smiling. He was so close his lips caressed the Captain's cheek.

Spock's head swam.

Kirk's tormenter straightened.

"In any case," he declared coldly, "we continue."

The green coats descended on the Captain again. One replaced the strap, another administered more drugs, and the third, without further ado, filled the gutter.

Kirk's shredded scream rent the silence. His voice was utterly ruined, but still he screamed. Even when, very soon, it became soundless, even after Spock muted the playback, the word echoed over and over again in Spock's mind.

_Spo-ock! Spo-ock!_

0000000000

Chapel smiled fondly when in the corner of her eye she saw the Captain finally nodding off over his paperwork. It was incredible how long that man could go without sleep. Doctor McCoy had given up and had gone, hours late, to his own bed, but not before insisting the Captain move from the office to a bed in the Recovery Ward.

Now the Captain's eyelids fluttered and slowly his chin sank down, down, down. Chapel stood frozen to the spot, waiting for him finally to drift into sleep so she could make him more comfortable.

His head jerked upright as he leapt back into full consciousness.

"Oh," he said, seeing her startled face. "I-I really don't want to go to sleep."

"I've noticed that," Chapel said, a little severely.

"I don't want to dream. Don't want McCoy to be right," he explained with a sheepish smile.

Chapel knew the dreams somehow brought on the seizures. She nodded to show that she understood.

"I can give you that sedative now, to get you past the dreaming stage."

Kirk scoffed weakly.

"We've tried that before," he murmured.

Chapel was about to say something about him needing to sleep at _some_ point, when she heard the swish of the Sick Bay doors.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said, and left to see who had just come in.

She drew a breath. It was a Vulcan! And so like Spock, too.

"I apologize, I didn't mean to startle you," the Vulcan said.

Chapel instantly revised her comparison. This Vulcan wasn't like Spock at all. He was smiling at her, and not pleasantly. It made her skin crawl.

"I am looking for Doctor McCoy."

"He's off duty. May I-"

Her words were turned to air in her mouth. The Vulcan's rude gaze had left her. She turned to where he was looking with such fascination.

Captain Kirk was standing in the doorway, holding on to the jamb.

Chapel felt something was terribly wrong. For one it was inconceivable that the Captain would show himself, in Sickbay clothes, so vulnerable. But there he stood, trying very hard, and failing, to hide his pain.

"Commander Varek," Kirk began.

Varek _smiled_.

"Captain? I didn't know you had taken ill."

What a slimy worm, Chapel thought.

She rushed to the Captain, intent on extricating him from this demeaning situation. When she put her hand on his arm he tore his eyes off the Vulcan and looked at her.

"To the floor," he whispered, and the fear, pain, and confusion in his eyes turned over into something dark. He let out a soft moan and sank through his knees.

She couldn't bear his weight and had no choice but to let the Vulcan assist her. Together they gently lowered the Captain to the floor, where he folded into the fetal position and started shivering, like he was suddenly very cold. He was conscious, his eyes staring with desperate concentration. Fighting it.

Hating to leave him literally in the hands of that Vulcan, Chapel ran to the com console and yelled, "Sick Bay to Doctor McCoy! Emergency!"

"What is happening t him?" the Vulcan asked.

"He's seizing," she yelled at him.

She grabbed a hypo and hurried back to the Captain's side. The Vulcan, taken aback by her vehemence, stood up and stepped away.

"Hold on, Captain," Chapel whispered to Kirk, administering the Asinolyathin.

He seemed to nod, but it was hard to tell. Then the shivering turned into shuddering, and the Captain was wracked under her hands, and all she could do was hold him down.


	22. Chapter 22

**Author's note: **This is the chapter. For me, anyway. Took me 21 chapters to get here! Let me know what you think. I lo-ove reviews!

**Chapter 22**

McCoy burst into Sick Bay.

_Jim_.

He went down on both knees net to Chapel and started scanning the shuddering body.

"Asinolyathin?"

"Yes, it's not working, Doctor!" Chapel said.

"It's too late. His brain chemistry is too erratic. We need to put him in a coma, but there is no time!"

"Can I help?"

McCoy looked up and there was that damned Vulcan, Varek.

The Vulcan stepped closer so he towered over them. McCoy had to crane his neck to look into the cold, arrogant face. There was something masterly, menacing and McCoy wished he would leave. Varek seemed to realize this and finally went down on one knee.

"I can mind meld with him, superficially of course, to relax him. Then you can have time to induce a coma."

McCoy balked at the idea. Jim moaned and his legs started kicking. The sensor bleeped out the frenzied seesaw inside his brain. Another couple of seconds and the Doctor would lose him to the seizure.

_And he'll be back on the _Copernicus_, biting his tongue, breaking teeth and Vulcan bones, bleeding in his brain and going into cardiac arrest._

"Do it!" McCoy ordered.

The Vulcan found the meld points instantly.

Kirk whimpered, a pitiful sound, and after a second his body froze.

McCoy didn't like it. The Vulcan didn't say a thing, did not voice his operations like Spock always did. Kirk was silent as well. At first his pupils rolled up into his head and his mouth opened, but no sound came out. The Doctor cursed. What had he done, allowed this stranger access to the Captain's mind! Who knows what he was doing! But his hands were tied. Once the meld is begun, there is no disconnecting it without risking great damage to both minds.

His scanner whirred and finally showed signs of improvement. Kirk closed his eyes, and relaxed.

Relieved, McCoy quickly whispered instructions to Chapel and the other orderly who had come running to prepare the stasis chamber for the coma.

When Kirk was entirely relaxed, the Vulcan disengaged. The meld could not have lasted more than two minutes.

McCoy checked his sensor again. Kirk was simply deeply asleep. More importantly, his brain chemistry was back to normal, just as if he had already undergone the coma treatment.

He looked up at Varek.

"I found his mind is…" the Vulcan hesitated, "damaged. A disease?"

There was something disingenuous about his question. But then everything about this Vulcan seemed disingenuous.

"Viral," was all McCoy would say.

The Vulcan seemed to be turning that information around in his mind.

"I suggest you get a Vulcan healer, he could do a great deal of good. I am not a healer, but I managed to bring him to deep sleep. Sleep will be good for him. There is no danger of a seizure for a while now. And, perhaps, no need for the coma."

They both stood up to let the orderlies transfer the Captain to the nearest bed.

Torn between gratitude and the dreadful fear that more damage had been done – and that he had allowed it to be done - McCoy considered what to do to get this creature out of his Sickbay, away from Jim.

"Thank you," he said. "Was there anything you required?"

"No, Doctor McCoy, it is not of consequence. It can wait."

Varek nodded curtly, turned and left.

"He's so creepy, that Vulcan," Chapel opined.

"But he saved the Captain's life," McCoy grumbled.

He walked to Jim, soundly asleep, and began to fuss over him.

00000000

Thirty-seven seconds – two hours and twenty-four minutes – later, in the middle of the torment, the Captain seized again, this time without warning. As he shook with ferocious force, the agitated Sintin quivered and eddied over his body. Then suddenly it was tinged with streaks of red. Kirk was having a massive nosebleed and started choking on the blood. The green coats had already flipped the lever, but Kirk went into cardiac arrest and, mercifully, into oblivion, before the blood red Sintin was fully drained away.

The green coats approached and worked on him for twelve minutes, restarting his heart, removing the feeding tube and intubating him, stemming the surge of blood from his nose.

Kirk was unconscious through all of this and Spock was glad for it. Never had he witnessed such indifferent treatment of a patient. To them, the Captain was like a piece of equipment that needed to be fixed. They were efficient, but there was no urgency and no _awareness_ to their actions. Spock realized that all this time, when he had admired Doctor McCoy's skill, he had also admired his compassion. He kept the memory of the Doctor's care, especially his care for James Kirk, in the back of his mind as he witnessed the butchery on the screen.

He was also well aware that the aliens' lack of empathy could be a clue to their identity.

At some point during all this Zahi was brought into the room. Her hands flew to her mouth and she moved to go to the Captain, but her guard held her back by her arm.

"Zahi," Spock asked urgently, "when they touched you, could you give them your ling? Did you get any ling back?"

"No," she said, with difficulty. "Like stones, they were. But that is not uncommon. We Xyla are most suited to humanoids. There are many races with whom our contact is merely physical."

Spock filed also this fact away.

Finally the Captain was stabilized. The monitors indicated he was returning to consciousness. When they pulled the tracheal intubation device from his throat he coughed and fought for breath. His eyes opened to his terribly reality. He stated to struggle weakly against his restraints.

The alien who was holding Zahi let her go. She ran to his side, but hesitated.

"He looks so vulnerable," she explained. "So fragile. There is blood everywhere. His eyes don't register me. He is looking right through me into the room. He is wasting what little strength he has, fighting desperately. He is stuck, stuck in his fear."

On the screen Zahi undid the wrist restraint closest to her and took Kirk's hand. She leaned close to him, touched her face to his face, covered him with feathery kisses, whispered him out of the horror, back to her.

He saw her and calmed.

"Lia," he mouthed, and tried to smile.

She kissed his mouth, very softly, then spoke something into it.

Kirk shook his head, minutely, and his lips formed more words. Their conversation was soundless, part words, part glances, part ling.

"I asked him again," Zahi said, "whether he would die. He said he would, but not by my hand. He knew he was near death. He _wanted _it. He begged me not to help him, not to prolong his suffering. His ling was intense, and I knew he would fight me if I tried to do what they had brought me to do, to prop him up. But he had not given up, SpockVulcan. It was his way of fighting, of getting free, the only way left to him."

She fell silent, tears running down her cheeks just as they did on the screen. She kissed him again, ever so gently, all over his face. He was smiling with real amusement, as if at a small child who was bringing him little, childish gifts. A sad smile, also, and peaceful.

Final.

Not aware of it until he had done it, Spock sobbed. All the rage and frustration that had built deep inside him had come to this, to this deep sorrow. It resembled but was, in quantity, very little compared to what he had felt during the crisis on the shuttle and the days after that, when he had not believed Jim to be alive. Now he knew that _this_ was when his Captain had died. This sorrow was deeper, richer than he had ever felt anything. He was _there and then,_ with Zahi, at Jim's death bed, saying goodbye, being forgiven.

He was holding Jim's hand, warm and moist, weak. He looked down at it. What he saw were tears brimming, falling from his eyes, spattering the console, and beyond that, Zahi's hand holding his hand.

He looked at her. Through his tears he saw her beatific smile as she relived and gave him her gift. In her ling _was_ that moment of infinite sadness. In her ling _was _Jim's mercy and love.

Spock wanted to drown in it, to be there for ever, but fear grew in him. This was so different from a mind meld or the bond that he and Jim had shared. This was too physical, too much like a boiling fury, uncontrollable, irrepressible. Spock reeled.

Zahi let go of his hand.

He drew in air. His heart beat violently. He closed his eyes, breathing hard, struggling with the loss, the relief.

She gave him a minute, then whispered, "He did not die, SpockVulcan. He did not get his wish."

She nodded once at the screen and Spock, his head still swimming, tore his eyes away from her.

On the screen the Vulcan had understood that Zahi was not complying with their orders. He ordered her removed from the room. A guard stepped forward and pulled her away. The Captain watched her go with that smile of mercy on his ravaged face.

Then, to Spock's surprise, they all went out of the room and left the Captain there by himself.

Spock was perplexed. He wiped his face on his sleeve and moved his finger over the fastforward button. There is hovered because his expectation that something should happen kept him from pressing it. Nothing happened for four minutes. The computer told him the transfer of data to his tricorder was complete, but Spock did not move. Another four minutes. Spock was acutely of the urgency to leave this place. On the screen, in his timeframe, Kirk too was aware of the time passing. It disturbed his peace. His head was still unfettered and he tried to lift it, but failed. A trickle of blood poured from his nose.

Then his eyes opened wide. The monitors sounded the quickening of his heart beat.

Spock tensed. What Kirk was looking at was out of the camera's reach.

"My God," Kirk breathed.

Hope sprang to life in his eyes, shattering the peace.

It was the Vulcan. Like before, Spock couldn't see his face, but he could see the shirt he was wearing. It was the blue shirt of the Federation Science officer, with two gold braids on the sleeve.

"_Spock_!" Kirk rasped.

_No_, Spock screamed.

The Vulcan rounded the table.

"_How_?" Zahi exclaimed, looking from the Vulcan on the screen to the Vulcan sitting next to her.

But Spock was beyond answering.

"Spock, help me," Kirk whispered.

The Vulcan was very close. "I'm here, Jim," he said in a fair imitation of Spock's baritone. "Trust me."

His fingers came down on the Captain's face. Kirk did not struggle. He was caught in the Vulcan's eyes.

"Trust me," the Vulcan chanted.

"I trust you-Spock?"

Kirk's eyes filled with pain, then he whimpered, and his eyes closed.

The Vulcan worked on the Captain, silently and for a very long time.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

When Spock had unplugged his tricorder and they rose to leave, he heard a rustle. He glanced up at the observation window and met the eyes of two Xylian males reflected there.

"Slowly turn around," said a dull voice in the monotone of the Captain's torturers.

They turned to face the phasers aimed at them.

With surprising speed one of them lunged forward and grabbed the stunned Zahi's arm, spun her towards him and clasped her in a strong embrace. He pressed his phaser to her temple.

"Raise your hands, Vulcan. No tricks."

Spock almost cried out with the rage that erupted deep inside him, much like the fireball that had rushed up at them on the 409-73 planetoid, a brutally physical pressure against his solar plexus, inside his throat, behind his eyes. It was almost beyond his power to suppress such a force, but he did it, because it would do the Captain no good if he and Zahi were killed in this bunker.

As he raised his hands he caught Zahi's eye. Was she so powerful, the LingXyla, that she could read his thoughts? That she could send him such a clear message?

"Move and she will be killed," the false Xylian warned.

The alien cautiously stepped forward and reached out to pull the phaser from Spock's belt.

They were fast, but Spock was faster. Before the Xylian had time to breathe, Spock had grabbed his outstretched wrist and nerve-pinched him - _mercilessly_, channeling all his fury, through his arm, into the aggressor's body.

The alien crumpled to the floor, dead.

For a second he had lost control of himself, as well as sight of Zahi. He sought her through the green haze that was clearing from his vision.

At first glance she and her guard were still exactly as they had been, she in his embrace, his phaser against her temple. But then Spock saw that the alien was lifeless. His grip loosened, his hand slipped and dropped the phaser. Then he slowly fell away from her and crashed to the floor.

Zahi still stood, unmoved, as if turned to stone. Spock approached her cautiously.

"Zahi?" he whispered. Something warned him not to touch her. "Zahi!" he repeated more urgently, knowing that more of them must be coming.

She snapped out of her trance and almost fell. Without hesitation he caught her in his arms and carried her to the next room.

"I must go and take care of the others," he whispered, laying her down on one of the cots. She was unresponsive but seemed physically unharmed.

Spock drew his phaser and hurried to the door opening. Pressed against the wall, he listened. That sibilant, susurrant language. Two of them that he could hear, one advancing rapidly down the corridor.

_I must take one alive_, Spock thought. It was doubtful that these individuals would be able to tell him anything about what took place here, but if he took one prisoner, they could at least ascertain their origins.

He checked the line of sight from the door. Whoever was coming would not at first be able to see the dead bodies or Zahi on the cot. He would have enough time-

The alien stepped into the room and Spock nerve pinched him, taking conscious care this time to control the force of his assault. Spock caught him and dragged the body to the corner. Then he stepped into the corridor and shot the alien at the other end, point blank, his phaser set to kill. He made it through the corridor so fast, the last alien, who had just jumped out of their vehicle, had no chance. Spock killed him too.

He was in a murderous state of mind.

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_What am I doing here?_

He was in Spock's quarters.

He looked around. Except for a thin layer of dust, all was the same. Even Spock's beloved lyre was still there.

_He will return._

Kirk swallowed. He staggered to the bed and sat down on it. He pressed the knuckles of his fist to his mouth, _hard_, to hold in the beasts of joy and grief.

_Keep it together! _

_How did I get here?_

McCoy had released him after he had woken up from his long sleep in Sick Bay. Apparently he had come near to another seizure – "the mother of all seizures," McCoy had called it – and that Vulcan, Varek, had saved him with a mind meld.

McCoy was extremely conflicted about that, beating himself up over it, apologizing, stressing it had been the only recourse, and cursing a great deal.

Kirk couldn't care less. He didn't remember any of it. He had woken up feeling refreshed and healthy and with an unbendable desire to get out of there and back to running his ship. He submitted to another brain scan because he knew that it would show that all was normal. They had had no choice but to release him, on the condition that he wear a life sign monitor. M'Benga had joined McCoy on that one.

And now he couldn't remember how he had got here. He recalled being in his own quarters and planning to go to the Bridge. Had he gone there? He didn't know. He glanced at the clock. He had lost at least three hours. But the monitor hadn't sounded an alarm. If it had, McCoy would have come been all over him by now.

He dropped his hand in his lap. There was a tiny thread of blood on the knuckles, and he realized he had cut his lip. He breathed in, deeply. He felt… relieved, like a great burden had been lifted. He couldn't remember what, or how, or when, but his mind told him it didn't matter, that he didn't have to care.

He rose like a firebird rises from the ashes and looked around, taking it all in. Would Spock return? Kirk nodded. He would make it so. He would track Spock down and make him. He would track down his Vulcan friend, knock him to the ground with his best right hook, then help him up and embrace him, and _not let go_.

For the first time in many days the crewmen who happened to see him in the corridors and on the Bridge saw him smile with confidence and ease.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

They were on their way to Oshmi, a smaller city, where Spock would use the gems to buy, borrow or steal a space-worthy shuttle. He had searched the aliens' vehicle – a rental - and found it devoid of useful information, as well as bugged, so he had disabled it. By the time he had returned to the bunker, Zahi had somewhat recovered. Without speaking she had handed Spock his tricorder. Still awash with the adrenaline of the last ten minutes, he had carried the unconscious body of the false Xylian to their vehicle and dumped it in the small storage area.

Now they sat side by side at the controls, Spock piloting, Zahi staring out at the sands below.

"Iln-Zahi," he began cautiously. "What happened?"

She made a sighing, resigned sound.

"It is taboo to speak of. It is death to _do_ it. Ling is life, it is _link_, togetherness, for good, or for bad. It is not separation, isolation, death. The LingXyla kills by taking the other's ling, all of it. But inside her the stolen ling turns against her. It turns her into a stone…"

She fell silent.

"Has it turned you into a stone, Zahi?" he asked. When she said nothing, he added, "You had no choice. They would have killed us. They would have turned us into stones."

"I know," she whispered. "And no, it did not turn me into a stone."

"I am glad, IlnZahi. I want to thank you for your gift."

Now she turned to look at him with those probing, fearless eyes.

"Like I said, SpockVulcan, you love KirkJim," she said.

Spock didn't hesitate.

"A link was forming, strengthening, between us. The Captain calls it friendship, or he would even call it love, yes. For us Vulcans such a friendship can grow into a bond. Then we call the other t'hy'la. For Vulcans, being telepaths, such a bond is something substantial, something over and above the presence and the process of friendship or partnership. It is as real and tangible to us as, for instance, a wedding ring. It is also profound, exclusive and forever. Even between Vulcans it is rare, and it is even rarer between Vulcans and humans. But there are cases, and I believed our link was growing into such a bond."

"Your ling," Zahi said softly, "your link, was it there, in my gift?"

Spock shook his head.

"No. It was lost, severed before that moment when you and the Captain… said goodbye. It is very puzzling, Zahi, because only the death of one or both of the partners ends it. It is… perplexing to me. The Captain, lacking the telepathic capacity and not having felt the link to begin with, could simply proceed with our friendship. But I – shamefully - could not. I was… in mourning."

Spock frowned deeply at the blatant impossibility of what he was saying. He looked away, down at his hands on the controls.

"But KirkJim is not dead," Zahi observed. "And you are not dead. So _it_ must still be alive as well. Could it be hidden?"

Spock looked back up at her.

"I do not believe it could be hidden from me," he mused.

"Not from you, but from KirkJim?" Zahi speculated.

Spock stared at her, not caring to conceal his astonishment.

_Could it be that simple?_

"Perhaps. Yes. The link is like a bridge… If the bridge itself and one contact point are still there, but the other contact point has been… erased, then there is no longer any bridging. Zahi," he added urgently, "did the Vulcan approach the Captain before you climbed?"

"No, he stayed apart, because his Xyla disguise was not very convincing, not like-not like his _Spock_ disguise. But-wait! KirkJim took a nap in the back of the van on the way to the Wall. He said that Zent had kept him up late, that he had risen too early that morning, and that he wanted to be rested for the climb. When he was asleep the Vulcan sent me to the front to be with LackFarn at the controls, and he spent maybe three minutes with KirkJim. I did not see what he did, though."

"It is possible that he performed a superficial mind meld on the Captain as a way of scouting his mind, gauging his strength before tackling it. It would not have woken the Captain and he would not have felt a difference when he did. Any telepath would have discovered the link in the Captain's mind. He _could_ have hidden it, hidden it from Jim. The Captain would not _consciously_ miss it, but..."

"What, SpockVulcan?"

"I hope we are not too late, IlnZahi. For many reason, for all our sakes, I hope we are not too late."

000000000000

In Oshmi Spock let IlnZahi do all the talking. She had son located a shuttle for sale, and after Spock did a quick diagnostic on it – all the while the price ticked higher – she gave him the nod. He paid up with the gems and something extra to ensure their privacy while they transferred the unconscious alien into the new shuttle. In a matter of two hours after arriving in Oshmi they were in open space.

Spock lost no time. Using his security clearance and Starfleet encryption codes he hoped his inquiries weren't attracting unwanted attention.

"The _Enterprise _is en route to collect the last delegates to the Babel Conference," he told Zahi when his transmissions were complete. "They are the Vulcan Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets, Sarek, and his wife."

"Do you think this has anything to do with them?"

"I am certain it does. T'Pau, one of our Vulcan leaders, informed me that there is a small faction of off-world Vulcans who are plotting to undermine the Federation."

"Blowing up a Starship full of delegates will do that?"

"It will, IlnZahi, especially if it turns out that it was Captain James T. Kirk who set the bomb."

"Let's contact KirkJim right away!" Zahi cried out.

Spock shook his head.

"First of all, the _Enterprise _will not be within reach of our communication systems for another one hour and two minutes. Secondly and more importantly, I fear that if the Captain is alerted to the fact that anyone is on to the plot, he will either alert his aggressors or set off the bomb right away."

"Send word to someone on the ship, then! That Doctor? Your Security Officer!"

"Now that the renegade Vulcans know that we are on to their plan, any mention of my name will alert them. If I were to contact anyone aboard the _Enterprise_, and if the Vulcan is monitoring ship's communications, the result will be the same. No, the Captain must not know that I know until I am there, _with him_, to stop him from doing harm or alerting his abductors. But we have been lucky, IlnZahi. We can intercept the _Enterprise_ on its way to Aldebaran, where it will pick up Sarek. Let us hope that the renegades are greedy and will hold off until the last delegate, and one of theirs, is aboard as well."

"It is a pity you could not read the alien's mind," Zahi said.

Spock had attempted a mind meld on their still-unconscious prisoner, who had had turned out to be, as Zahi put it, like a stone.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

"Woah! She-is-_beautiful_! No wonder KirkJim loves her so much!"

Spock raised an eyebrow, then smiled, taking in the sight. He had brought the shuttle around the planet so that the _Enterprise_ had come suddenly into view. Zahi had been off-world several times, so deep space was no novelty to her, but she had never seen anything close to a Starship.

And for Spock it was like a homecoming.

"But how will we get on board, SpockVulcan? Without alerting them."

"Code 2-10," Spock informed her. "It will give us security clearance _and_ secrecy. And there will be only one person receiving us: the Captain himself."

He keyed in the program and codes and the _Enterprise_ gave him the all-clear. Her shuttle bay gates opened and Spock steered their craft closer and in. He landed it on the pad next to another shuttle that he did not recognize.

"Someone else used 2-10," he warned Zahi.

The gates closed behind them. They rushed through the post-landing, decontamination and decompression procedures, but then Spock stopped Zahi from opening the hatch.

"I want the Captain to step inside first," he explained. "I want the doors to be closed behind him before we reveal ourselves, and even then we will have to overpower him."

They looked through the small porthole together. The bay doors opened and Zahi sucked in a breath.

Two men entered. Neither of them was Kirk.

00000000

McCoy cursed as he followed Scotty to the shuttle bay. Though the Chief Engineer looked mighty nervous himself, McCoy was glad Scotty had been able to come. He was terrible at diplomacy. He could never remember the proper greeting for many of these races. It just wouldn't do to give a Medusan an Aaamazzarite salute! And who knew who would come out of _that_ beat-up vehicle. It looked more like a smuggler's craft than something an Ambassador would want to travel in, even if he or she were touring incognito.

_This is Jim's job, dammit!_

Then that hatch opened and who leapt out but Spock, dressed in a dusty, black robe. And who else! He would have recognized her anytime.

"What the hell! I thought you were dead!" he yelled.

He looked over at Scott, who had also had the pleasure of meeting the Xylian witch that dark morning, three months ago. But Spock cut short any further observations about who was alive or dead.

"Where is the Captain?" the Vulcan barked.

"He-He told us to meet you-whoever it was," Scott sputtered. "This is highly unusual, Mister Spock, I—"

"_Where_!" Spock cut him off.

Spock wasn't waiting for the answer, which he seemed to know already. He ran to the console and smacked the button.

"Computer, locate Captain Kirk."

"Captain Kirk is in the First Officer's quarters," the impersonal voice announced.

_Well, there's a surprise._

"Is he alone?"

"Captain Kirk is not alone."

_What?_

"Who is he with?"

"Unidentified," the computer intoned.

Spock spun around toward McCoy. The Doctor cringed under the cold, sharp scrutiny of those dark eyes.

"_Who_?" the Vulcan demanded hoarsely.

"Must be either that Kodelai General, Naren," McCoy submitted instantly, "or his First, Varek – a _Vulcan, _Spock!"

Then that Xylian woman let out a hair-raising scream and Spock launched himself through the shuttle bay door into the deserted corridor.

McCoy tried to keep up with him, but whatever it was that Spock knew and could not stop to share, gave him such urgency that the Doctor soon fell behind.

000000000

"Open," Spock yelled, still meters away from his door. He hoped the voice commands had not been changed. He needed the element of surprise. If only he hadn't waited for the others to come into the bay, he would have gained an extra minute.

The door swished open and Spock rounded the corner and rushed headlong into his quarters.

And stopped.

"Come closer," the Vulcan warned him - a cold voice, but loud, with a thrill of nervousness – "and I'll kill him!"

The Captain was on his knees before the Vulcan, who stood towering over him. Slender fingers seemed suctioned onto his upturned face – on the temple, cheekbone, and jaw – while the strong right hand clutched the hair on the back of his head, holding him up and still.

Kirk was frozen, captive, but not unaware, not entirely under the Vulcan's spell. His face was contorted with alarm and confusion and - Spock thought - he seemed conscious of the sudden change in his aggressor and perhaps even of Spock's presence. The meld must have only just been initiated, and was now disturbed.

Spock knew immediately what to do.

"Jim, you have resisted him before! _Remember-_"

"Quiet!" the Vulcan yelled in a voice full of rage.

His right hand moved to the Captain's neck. Spock froze. He knew the Vulcan could snap the Captain's neck in a split second. And he knew that he would, and then they would never know what Kirk had done. And Spock knew that there was no way he could prevent it, that he had come too late.

But the meld, however superficial, was still in progress. And on the other end of it was James Kirk who, in the moment when Spock distracted his attacker, regained control, not over his paralyzed body but over his iron-willed mind.

The Vulcan screamed shrilly and released his captive and flung himself back the few feet to the wall in the cramped quarters.

Spock moved also. He stepped forward and lifted Kirk, light and limp as a puppet-on-a-string just cut loose, up and away from the Vulcan.

When he had turned back, the enemy was dead. The eyes were stone cold, the body slid down the wall and collapsed into a heap on the floor.

Giving him no more thought, Spock turned back to the Captain. Kirk too was on the floor, on his hands and knees, fighting for breath. McCoy, who had just run in, rushed to his friend's side.

"I don't have my medkit!" the Doctor yelled up at Spock.

But when Spock approached the comm unit, Kirk uttered a painful "_No!"_

Spock obeyed and turned back to see the Doctor help Kirk sit up on his ankles. The Captain was regaining control over his breathing, but the sight – which Spock's brain overlaid with the images from the torture chamber - was still painful to see.

"I'm fine, Bones," Kirk whispered. Then: "Spock! Spock, he did something to me." His eyes lit upon the dead Vulcan. Panic sprang into his eyes. "_Spock! _What did he_ do?_"

Spock sank to his knees and held Kirk up by the upper arms and looked him in the eye.

"He abducted you on Xyla and placed a command in your mind. It is not too late-"

"-I don't remember, Spock! It's a gap, a void!"

Spock could feel the tremor run through his friend's body.

"Meld with me, Jim," he pleaded. "It is—"

"-_No_!"

Kirk, shivering now, struggled to escape Spock's grasp, but he was weak and uncoordinated, and Spock would not let go.

"Jim, listen! _He_ planted your distrust of me in your mind. We must find out what his plan was, whether you have executed it!"

Kirk's head snapped up and his eyes opened wide. He stopped fighting Spock and took two tremulous breaths.

"You mean-You mean I could have put a _bomb_ on the _Enterprise_?"

"That is a possibility, Captain."

Kirk drew another breath.

"Do it!" he ordered, cool as steel, in command, his teeth set against the quiver in his voice.

"Now wait a moment," McCoy yelled at Spock. "Just now when you mentioned a meld his heart rate nearly _doubled_ and it's not come down and that's just on top of a raging fever and the beginning of the shakes. And you know where _that_ ends up going, Spock!"

Spock looked at the Captain, who despite his self-command was rapidly sliding into a seizure. Spock was still holding him. The tremor in his body was now visible, and even the pupils of his eyes, though Kirk tried desperately to anchor them to Spock, were rolling.

There was no time to spare. He would have to go in deep and quick.

He pulled Kirk down and helped him lay down on his side on the floor. McCoy, out of options, held him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his hip. Spock swallowed. His fingertips touched down on Kirk's burning face.


	26. Chapter 26

Author's note: Sorry it took so long. Life, activism, all that. By the way, I don't own, I don't earn… But I *do* enjoy!

**Chapter 26**

"Our minds are one."

Spock shields almost gave to the anger and sadness that welled up in him. He had watched hours of Jim Kirk's body being wounded, but all of that paled to what had been done to his beautiful mind.

The strong, pulsing glow that so attracted Spock to Kirk's mind was gone. What was left was a grey wasteland, a landscape still under attack from above and below. What little steadiness remained was cracking, caving in. What radiance remained was leaching away. Ripped and torn edges bled, frayed ends wafted, loose, unconnected, lost…

This had been going on for months now. This was still going on.

Spock did not hesitate. He plunged in deep, struggling in pitch black, claustrophobic passages where earlier there had been airiness and wholesomeness. As he went deeper, seeking the source of this demolition, the dank darkn turned into suffocating mental sludge, thickening like wet cement. It was a barrier, and Spock knew he was close. He forged on, shaping his mind into a wedge, a needle. There it was. A cyst, pumping poison.

He stopped before it.

All around him Jim Kirk screamed.

00000000

McCoy was vaguely aware of others entering, but it was seconds before he could look up. When he did he recognized Scotty, and the witch.

"Why d'you bring _her_ here?" he yelled.

"Well, Doctor, she said she could help-" Scotty began.

But McCoy cut him off with a withering glance. What with monitoring Spock's haywire vitals and Kirk's nascent seizure, and the feelings of alarm and guilt bubbling up around his memory of the other Vulcan – stark stone dead against the wall, mere feet away – melding with Kirk and doing who knows what damage-well, he had his hands full.

And things spun out of control real fast. Kirk, prone on the floor next to the Spock – kneeling, or rather bent over in pain as his slender hand trembled on the Captain's face – let out a keening sound of great pain. McCoy's sensor instantly went wild, and Kirk began to shudder.

"O God," McCoy whispered. Still no medkit! What a fool he was to have let them think this would work. Why couldn't they have waited, moved to Sick Bay-

Suddenly he was thrown clear, or rather, he violently withdrew from the energy that had jolted him, through his hands and arms pressing Kirk down to the deck. Scott caught him before he fell.

"Let me go-" McCoy protested, but then stopped and saw what Scotty was seeing.

The witch had contorted herself between the wall and the two men in the meld. She had one hand on Spock's shoulder and the other on Jim's. Her eyes were closed, her face contorted with concentration. The effects were instant and visible. Spock's breathing settled, Jim calmed.

0000000

Air. Light. A suffusion of strength. Kirk stopped screaming. Spock drew breath and courage.

He approached the source of all the pain, the fist of torment and distrust. His mind probed it, all over. The pain went deep, and wide, but flooded with IlnZahi's strength, Spock waxed deeper, wider. Soon he had enveloped it, disengaged it from Kirk's mind.

Moaning with the effort, he took it into his own mind. Zahi was there with him, not so much a mental but a _biological_ entity with the vise grip of titanium and the surging heat of molten lava. Together they held it, crushed it, until all that was left of it was dust.

And a kernel, a hard kernel of truth amid all the lies and deceit. Spock studied it, then pulverized it too.

When he returned to Kirk's mind, it was still in ruins. Spock could see the Captain's will, almost exhausted by his last effort against the enemy's forced meld, struggling to rise up.

_All is well, Jim. _

Kirk could not respond, could not formulate a clear thought in his mind.

Alarmed, Spock searched. There it was, where the cyst has trampled and buried it. Alive.

He rejoiced and lowered his shields to let all of that joy infuse the link. It lit up and for a moment illuminated the entire field of the ravaged mind. All the ruins became painfully stark, undeniable, and Spock carefully shielded his despair and anger at the destruction. But as his light faded to a small, bubbling spring, another light rose up around it, _from_ the field, all around.

That glow!

Spock dwelt in it for a few seconds longer. He would have stayed longer and helped Jim heal, but later. He had one very important task ahead of him.

_Spock!_ _The bomb!_

The whip crack of Jim Kirk's mind.

_I know where it is, Jim, and how to defuse it. I must go now. I will succeed!_

Spock opened his eyes and found the Doctor and Engineer Scott gaping at them. He turned to Zahi. She had let go. She was pale, but unhurt.

She nodded, and Spock rose.

00000000

"Mister Scott, with me!"

Scotty didn't question the Vulcan. He followed him out into the corridor.

"There is an explosive device hidden inside the port warp engine nacelle behind cell three."

Scott's pounding heart skipped a beat.

"It would take a _small_ explosion, Mister Spock, at that location, to blow us all to Kingdom come!"

"Indeed, Mister Scott," said the unflappable Vulcan, entering the waiting turbolift. "Deck Ten! Varek suspected that it was we who were docking under code 2-10. He moved up the detonation."

"How much time, Mister Spock?"

"We have twelve minutes and four seconds to disengage it."

Scott swallowed. The lift seemed sluggish as it hurled them to the top deck of the Engineering Hull from which they could access the nacelles. From the lift they were in, at the front of the saucer, it would take them at least five minutes to reach the nacelle control room, far aft on Deck Nine. Spock's order to stop at Deck Ten made sense, though. Deck Nine was a warren of corridors and rooms. The more orderly laid-out Deck Ten would allow them to run straight through, then a quick climb up Jefferies Tube 36, which would land them right in front of the port nacelle control room. Then through a hatch and a tight crawl to the third cell…

Spock shot out of the turbo lift. Scott feared his lungs would burst trying to keep up with him, but he succeeded. Then Spock disappeared in the Jefferies Tube, and when Scott arrived in the control room, he found the Vulcan raising his phaser.

""You cannae _shoot_ it, Mister Spock!" Scott exclaimed, lunging forward to stay Spock's hand.

One look at the hatch, however, told him it was welded shut.

"It's only superficially fused," Spock said, "Pay release my hand. We have forty-five seconds left, Mister Scott," Spock informed him with cool logic.

Scott let go of the Vulcan's burning hand and stood aside. Spock aimed his phaser and the blue beam hit the hatch, which glowed orange, then red, until its structural integrity finally relented, and it fell out of its opening.

Disregarding the hot edges, Spock propelled himself inside the horizontal tube. Scott grabbed the emergency tool box from the control room console and plunged in after him.

"I see it," Spock announced, one body length ahead.

The tube was barely wide enough for both of them, but Scott elbowed himself next to him.

A small device, wedged between two casings, out of reach.

Scott handed the forceps from the tool box. Spock grabbed for the device missed, finally gripped it and yanked it out, none too gently.

Below a small keyboard a simple screen counted down.

_Seven seconds._

Scott was about to give in to despair, thinking that at least they'd be dead within a matter of seconds.

Spock's nimble fingers keyed in a number faster than Scott could track.

_SC937-0175CEC. _

"The Captain's serial number!"

The countdown rolled over one more second. Then it stopped.

_Two seconds left._


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

Captain Kirk was peacefully asleep in one of Sick Bay's private rooms, IlnZahi by his side. Spock checked in on them periodically, but he made sure to stay close to the Doctor, who was watching the tapes from Xyla.

He observed McCoy out of concern for him, but also as a clue to his own reactions. The Doctor wore the horror plainly on his face, which once in a while he hid in both hands, moaning. He also cursed a great deal, out loud, and watched in a prayer-like silence. He cried.

By watching McCoy Spock found it possible to admit that these emotions, which he had felt, and still felt, were appropriate. That the fact that he was a Vulcan feeling them, having, even, expressed them, was irrelevant. That only the fact that Jim Kirk was his friend was relevant. That to have felt anger, hopelessness, mourning, and now, _joy,_ was logical.

Finally McCoy had reached the end. He sat in silence for quite a while.

"Did Jim kill Varek," McCoy asked softly, "with his _mind_?"

"No, Doctor. He merely broke the link, abruptly enough to make Varek stagger. It was sufficient. Varek saw that I would gain the upper hand and that I would draw the location of the bomb from him. He committed suicide."

"Have you found out anything about him?"

"Nothing beyond what I learned from IlnZahi and the recordings. I relayed all that information to Starfleet and the Vulcan High Council. Starfleet Security has removed the agent we captured on Xyla from the _Enterprise_ for interrogation, as well General Naren, who, I suspect, will not be helpful because he knew nothing_. _The extra information from Zent's database has also been taken. I have no doubt that they will get to the bottom of all this soon. And that they will not share it with us."

"Damn it!" McCoy burst out. "They kidnapped and tortured a Federation Officer, turned him into a weapon to blow up a starship with a hundred ambassadors on board. And they're hushing it all up!" He stopped, his rant arrested when his eyes lit on the screen, now dark, where the horror had played itself out, once more.

"We may have to rest assured," Spock said softly, "that matters are dealt with. In the meantime, _those _records" – he nodded at the screen – "have become classified."

"Maybe that's for the best," McCoy grumbled darkly. Then he burst out: "How could I have let that monster meld with Jim!"

"You had no choice, Doctor" Spock replied instantly. "And though it was self-serving on Varek's part, it saved the Captain's life."

"How do you mean?" McCoy huffed, reluctantly listening.

"Most of the damage to the Captain's mind was not done by Varek, Doctor, either during the melds on Xyla or during that meld in Sick Bay. Varek hid the Vulcan link. He wiped and rearranged the Captain's memories . He planted the order. While I do not want to dismiss the harm of those actions, they could not have caused such devastation."

"He did it to himself, didn't he?" whispered McCoy.

"Indeed, Doctor. Subconsciously he knew what was happening, what he was about to do, and so he went on self destruct. Gradually but relentlessly, and forcefully every time he was reminded of what happened on Xyla. Varek must have perceived this in him, and he made sure to be there when the crisis hit – possibly the crisis that would have allowed the Captain to complete his self sabotage. Varek's meld in Sick Bay _was,_ as he said, superficial, just enough to stabilize Jim's mind until he executed his orders. Had you _not_ allowed Varek to meld, Jim would be dead now. Varek would have set the bomb himself. I would have come too late."

McCoy opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again.

Nurse Chapel stuck her head around the office door.

"The Captain is awake."

000000000

Even after his sleep, the Captain looked exhausted. He was grey-faced, his eyes sunken. The ordeal of the last months was not going to fade away so easily. But the sunken eyes and his ashen lips were smiling up at Zahi.

"Thank you," he said to her. "You saved my life, many times over."

Zahi shook her head. "I was also the one who delivered you to them, KirkJim."

"You didn't know," he said simply. "But then you made good."

She nodded.

"I was so surprised when they brought you out, after. We had said goodbye. I knew it was all wrong, youwere all wrong. I saw there was… _less_ of you. I can't explain it. But I thought it was better to have less of KirkJim than no KirkJim at all!"

"I agree with you there," McCoy put in – showing his gratitude to her, whom he had derided all this time. "But it was hard, nevertheless, to see that less diminishing to less and even less."

Kirk turned to the Doctor to reward him with a sad smile.

"What will you do now?" he asked Zahi.

"I will work with the new authorities on Xyla to locate Zent's victims, to see that justice is done for them. After that?" She smiled, a bit sadly, a bit mischievously. "You come and visit me, KirkJim." Then she looked at Spock. "You too, SpockVulcan. We worked well together, you and I, though you climb like a four-legged spider!"

To top off her mischief, she turned to the Doctor, expressly not smiling, not saying anything, just squinting at him, daring him, they all knew, to call her a 'witch' again. When McCoy turned red, and looked away, she burst out in laughter to show she had just joked, and forgave him, which made him even redder, and grin awkwardly.

Zahi then bent over Kirk and kissed him, passionately, making McCoy roll his eyes and Nurse Chapel leave the room, shaking her head. Spock raised an eyebrow, but felt no surprise, and only joy. Kirk finally laughed, the sound muffled by her mouth and his breathlessness, and Zahi released him. She squeezed Kirk's hand, let go, and strode proudly out of the room.

"Did you-did you relay all the data to Starfleet, Spock?" Kirk asked after a second.

Spock couldn't reply. He was aware that he stood there, at Jim's bedside, speechless, battling his emotions. McCoy rescued him;

"We did, Jim. But I don't think you should watch those recordings," he added quickly.

"I don't need to, Bones," Kirk said mildly, tiredly. "I remember each and every second of it."

McCoy looked at him closely. "You seem awfully… calm about it," he observed.

"I've been grieving and raving about it for a long time now, though I didn't know it. Now I know it, and I'm done with it."

McCoy nodded, glanced at the silent Spock, and discreetly left the room.

"Jim," Spock started, but his voice was too hoarse.

Kirk lifted that hand, just as he had done when he regained consciousness after his first seizure. For a moment Spock felt himself sicken as he fell into a déjà-vu, but then Kirk's smile struck into him like a hook, drawing him back. The hand too, which had merely gestured him to be quiet, beckoned him.

Spock approached and Kirk clasped his hand, hard.

"I can feel it now, Spock," he said, his voice low. His eyes were filled with a wonder. "Our link."

"May it be a source of your healing, Jim," Spock said.

"Yours," Kirk said, "as it is mine."


End file.
